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These are not city tiles. They are small village homes with very little variety. Not worth the purchase.<br><br>
<b>LIKED</b>: Nothing.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Very little variety. It claims to be city tiles but is really a collection of small village homes. I wouldn't advise purchasing this product.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>
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Creator Reply: |
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Our only reply to this review is that Dave Masucci is an employee of Eden Studios, another d20 publishing company. |
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"APG City Tiles" by the Alea Publishing Group (with accompanying text by Joshua Raynack) is something any DM with a printer can use to help with a specific campaign or game, or, when needed, can help with the spur-of-the-moment-and-completely-unplanned-for-bar-fight scenarios in a fantasy or medieval game.
Easy-to-understand printing instructions make up the first page, and a brief description of medieval city structure makes up the second before diving into the city tiles themselves. (The writing is professional and easy-to-read; writer Raynack includes enough information to help DMs use this product in their own fantasy or medieval games without talking or writing down to them.) Seventeen pages of city tiles are presented here, and they include everything from a tavern or inn, a field of grass, city streets and even an eating hall. The cartography is clean and their functionality is self-evident. While these tiles are all quite generic, they would be easy to puzzle-piece together to create a dynamic playing area for your players' minis.
There are two different .pdf versions of this supplement - one is in color, the other is a grayscale black-and-white version. The grayscale version is identical to the full-color version minus the color, so if you're looking to save a little color ink, you?ll not miss out on any details.
Suggestions are provided at the beginning of this supplement regarding not just printing of the tiles, but how to make them a bit more durable (foamboard is suggested as a base) as well.
While there?s certainly absolutely nothing wrong with using wet-erase markers on a battle-mat, especially in a pinch, this is a solid product that deserves to be seen and used by DMs.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: At $5.00, this product is quite the bargain. These tiles can be used over and over again, and you'll more than get your money's worth. The cartography is clean and neat, and most of your town-building needs can be met with this supplement.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: There's very little not to like about this product!<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>
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APG City Tiles is a 19 page pdf product featuring a number of map tiles for building a city block. The aim of the product is to allow GMs to easily construct a city block consisting of merchant and freeman homes, inns, taverns, streets and others using well put together maps that can be printed and placed straight onto a gaming table. Alea Publishing Group (APG) are not new to the 2D tile/map market and have produced several other lines of products, including paper tiles and figures for different gaming genres.
This product comes as both a full-colour screen version and a greyscale printer-friendly version. The latter allows you the saving on colour ink, although contains exactly the same product as the screen version. Some of the details in the printer friendly version go missing or are hard to distinguish, so to gain the most benefit from the product, printing the colour tiles is recommended. In addition to the seventeen map tiles presented in the product, Alea Publishing have also included an brief overview on medieval life and buildings, information that can enhance the flavor of the game. Layout and presentation is very good, and from a presentation point of view this product should not disappoint.
The main body of the product contains the seventeen map tiles that can be used to construct a city block or just used as is for an individual building. Each map tiles is 300 dpi, making for easy printing with good quality at the same time. Tiles include a grass base, common inn, freemans' homes, merchants' homes, common tavern, eating hall, and a small collection of streets. Most of the homes have upstairs and downstairs portions, and contain the minimum level of detail so that DMs are not restricted by the contents of the maps. Typical features included beds, barrels, tables, chairs and fireplaces.
The quality of the maps is good, although the variety could've been increased a little bit. All tables and other furnishings, for example, look the same and use the same map components. A little variety here would've made a city block more unique rather than a conformal collection. Layout and design of the contents of the maps makes sense, and there are more than enough rooms to use for a variety of different purposes. The streets are a little disappointing in that there are too few to construct something realistic or even logical. A few more different types of streets and general variety on the interior decorations would've made this product much better. Overall, though, the maps are good, very useful, and would make a good addition to any GMs arsenal of props to enhance gaming at the table.<br><br>
<b>LIKED</b>: Good quality maps with high utility value. Some additional added value in useful information regarding medieval lifestyles and buildings.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Variety is lacking in places and features are often repetitive. Could've done with a few additional street designs, and more variety in the structure and furnishing of the houses and buildings.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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About 12 months ago I had this wild idea.
I bought about a ton of those build it yourself print outs with the intention that I was going to construct a massive 3-D city for my players. After toiling with an exacto knife, several skin breaking cuts and 100s of dollars in ink costs, I realized that this was not for me. Apparently Alea Publishing realized that it was not for a lot of people when it created AGP City Tiles, a 20 pg PDF containing
AGP City Tiles provides 22 images that can combine to perform as elaborate a hamlet, thorp, city or village as you wish. There are enough varieties of homes and land to construct fairly expansive communities, if you like communities without shops and smiths. My guess is that these buildings will possibly be in a future expansion of the product, but I was hoping to create a complete village right out of the box.
The artwork itself is very colorful and realistic. The outside grass looks very plush with sparks of dirt patches to add to the realism. The interiors were as detailed but many of the objects felt repetitive as one house or building seemed to run into another. I could not feel much of a difference between some of them. The tables also have food on them which from a descriptive point of view can be a minor annoyance when you are describing a room that is suppose to be unoccupied.
For the Dungeon Master
I like the marketing idea of producing an entire city worth of tiles all within the same product and having them all included in an inexpensive PDF will be very beneficial. Creative DMs will enjoy the budget and construction information discussed at the beginning of the maps.
The Iron Word
I like having everything you need for a village in one easy PDF and the artwork is a notch above other attempts at doing this. There are some mild annoyances (no smiths or shops, lack of furniture variety) but those seem really minor when considering this is one of the best types of this product. The major problem though, is the lack of a complete map or examples of complete maps for those of us whom are less imaginative.
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<b>LIKED</b>: - great artwork
- imagination is only boundary
- black and white and color copies
- easy on the printer<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: - some of the interiors don't have a ton of detail
- no complete maps so you got to have a good imagination <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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It did it's job, outlining Mutations for D20 and proved helpful for a short post nuke adventure.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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APG Paper Figures Military Orders
Figures and miniatures seem to be important pieces to the d20 game. It can help the game get a more tactical feel for large combats and help the players visualize the scene for interesting and bold maneuvers. In the age of miniatures and paper figures though, the cost can get expensive and the items need to look cool.
This collection of Paper Knights actually makes complete sense for Alea. They have devoted themselves to products that deal with knights, their codes, their orders, and everything one might want about knights. They do a good job and have really defined themselves well in this niche.
Paper Figures Military Orders comes in a zip file a little over five megs. The file itself is a little over seven megs. One little detail that I like that I do not see in this type of items is book marks. They book marked the figures. This is not a product that really needs book marks but I prefer to see them then to not.
The PDF is not that big only about ten pages. They amount of figures per page is a little lower then I usually see. For the first few pages they only have four figures per page, but the final page does have twelve on it. But I am getting ahead of myself. They have a nice table of contents and possible the most important detail is they have instructions for keeping the paper figures in decent shape. The paper figures themselves look great. I believe they are pictures of actual painted miniatures. These are the type of figures that makes on want to start a Crusade. Most of the figures are human but there is some dwarf, half elf, and halfling ones as well. There are a few different types of knights as well like the Teutonic, Templar, and Hospitaller.
Another great little detail is they have the pictures linked to the web. By clicking on the picture it takes you to the Pegeso Model website where you can browse and actually purchase the miniatures of these figures.
These are very nice looking paper figures. There just are not a lot of them here. If one has the need for knights though, I have not seen any paper figures better.
<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Nice scenario. The added extras are lovely additions as well :D<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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As always, a handy little e-zine. Worth the purchase even if you can't immediatelt find something of use.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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As always, a handy little e-zine. Worth the purchase even if you can't immediatelt find something of use.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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As always, a handy little e-zine. Worth the purchase even if you can't immediatelt find something of use.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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The art herein is perfect for adding a 'Ye Olde' feel. It is in two seperate styles, about half the images for each. The first set includes a fair number of color illustrations that may or may not work well with the b&w, depending on how you feel about mixing the two. I was disappointed to not find a volume II, though it should be possible to find more works by the artists in question with a bit of effort. Or even find someone who is willing and able to duplicate the style.<br><br>
<b>LIKED</b>: I'm a believer in maintaining a consistent art style, and there is a broad enough range of subjects in either style to populate the typical rulebook.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Really no downside. It is what it claims to be.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>
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Very poor image resolution. Not even close to the quality of the "Military Orders" set.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>
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Very disappointing. These Gladiators could have been better translated from the company's miniatures to a paper format. Just shooting them with a camera is not good enough.<br><br>
<b>LIKED</b>: The original miniatures from which the paper product is made are wonderful.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Very bland presentation, dull colors, and certainly not enough figure or pose variety for a download product.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>
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Creator Reply: |
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We are truly sorry that you found the product disappointing. We have a very limited license with Pegaso Models, which in turn restricts us what we can do with their images.
Most of our products have a free demo that shows what can be expected before purchase. We encourage everyone to download the demo of any of our products before purchasing.
As for the presentation, it is a bit dull and not as elaborate as our other products, due to printing issues.
However, we would like to thank you for your comments and we will evaluate them when making a future product of this type. It is your comments that help us grow as a company and to better serve you.
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Household Knight
Small PDFs that are tightly focused around a single new class are a nice way to go. It is like a small package and it is pretty easy to assess how useful it would be to one?s own game. The small PDFs are a popular form to produce and as Long as they cover the topic fully it seems to be the way to go.
Household Knights is a fairly new PDF by Alea Publishing Group. They have a good thing going with PDFs are knight related and very good quality. This PDF is fourteen pages long and nicely book marked. The lay out is in the typical well done way and look that most of their PDFs look like. The book is written by Joshua Raynack and Ryan Rawls did the good design work. The book comes in an on screen and print version.
The Household Knight has the title and responsibilities of the typical knight but is landless. He serves a lord and shares his heraldry of sorts. The class is presented as a base class of the typical twenty levels. It has good base attack bonus and saves like a fighter but slightly less hit points and better skills and skill points. They get a special Heraldry bonus and Commands per day. For the most part the class is okay but it gets some feats that I feel a knight would pick up sooner. For instance mounted combat which is the basic feat for that chain they do not get till second level. From my experience mounted characters pick those feats at first level. It seems a bit odd that they get a bonus of charging damage with a lance or similar weapon but not the mounted combat feat first.
The book covers the Household Knight well. It gives the epic version of the class and with the feats are epic feats as well as a few normal ones that are all focused on this class. There are six new feats in the book half of them epic. The commands are from a list that has first to fourth level commands. The commands seem interesting and really make having followers and a squire a lot more useful. The Heraldry bonus applies to the Command powers as well as sees if another NPC recognizes the character. It can also be used as a check to see if the character can get an audience with important people.
The book presents a much different kind of class and it will be good for someone looking for some different knight classes. The feats are interesting but most of the PDF is about the Household Knight so not a lot one can take away and use by itself. The heraldry can be used with reputation rules to form some good options that deal with medieval lords. The PDF fits very well with other products Alea Publishing Group has written. So, it would be ranked a lot higher for people who use their other books.
<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Pirate weapons, new spells, a chaotic prestige class (with accompanying feats) and an enhanced hell hound is what you?ll find in this issue of Alea Publishing Group?s ?Poor Gamer?s Almanac.? Don?t let the price of this installment of the ??Almanac? fool you; even though this is a free download, there is some quality material to be found in this .pdf.
?Pirate Weapons? by Joshua Raynack details a number of weapons that would find use in a pirate-game or -campaign (without narrowing its focus so much as not to be useful in a non-nautical gaming situation). After a few brief paragraphs of concise background material, writer Raynack presents several new rules: concealment and Hide bonuses involved with black powder firearms; reliability as a mechanic for use with firing firearm weapons; and firing mechanisms that can be used to either increase a weapon?s reliability, range increment or time to reload. Additionally, rules are given for different loading types (muzzle-loaders and breech-loaders) and different barrel types (smooth barrels or rifle barrels). This section is a bit mechanics-heavy, but the new rules are easy to understand and use.
There aren?t just firearms listed among the ?Pirate Weapons.? Also included are more hand-to-hand-style weapons, like gully knives, boucan knives and boarding axes. Also the marlinespike is given stats as a weapon. These statistics and rules are well-rounded and -balanced, and can add a definite black powder flavor to your game. There?s even a new feat - Speed Loader - introduced to take advantage of some of these new weapons.
?Greater Hell Hounds? are nastier, meaner and more cunning versions of the hell hound. Cameron Guill has created an interesting and challenging beast that may thrill the DM but scare the players at the game table. These outsiders are a mixture of hell hounds and minor demons, and their enhanced intelligence definitely make them a threat most players would not see coming (especially since greater hell hounds tend to conceal themselves within a group of ?regular? hell hounds before revealing their true nature).
Unfortunately, past the initial description and statistics, not much more is said of the greater hell hounds. There are no plot hooks. These is no mention of where a greater hell hound may be encountered. At the beginning of this column, writer Guill states that if a greater hell hound is found outside its native plane, it is usually on a specific mission, yet no mention of just what kind of missions a greater hell hound would undertake is made.
(Additionally, as a nitpick, the cover of this ?Poor Gamer?s Almanac? proclaims the inclusion of the ?Greater Hellhounds? in this issue, even though the creatures are correctly referred to throughout the rest of this supplement as ?greater hell hounds.? Even in the Monster Manual, the name of the hell hound is made up of two words; it is not ?hellhound,? but rather ?hell hound.?)
Three spells are presented in ?Spells of the Month,? a new column in ?Poor Gamer?s Almanac.? Cameron Guill provides the writing for these three variations of the ?faerie fire? spell ? ?lesser reveal?, ?reveal? and ?greater reveal.? These three spells of varying intensities are druid-only spells, which might limit their use in a game, but when writer Guill states that these spells have been playtested for balance, it can be believed. These are fair spells; the only drawback is that ONLY a druid can cast them.
Shawn Folk is the writer behind the ?Harbinger of Chaos? prestige class. A character with the ability to rage can tap further into their personal chaos and fury and take levels in this prestige class. With class abilities like Chaotic Rage (adding harbinger of chaos levels to his or her rage bonus to Strength), Chaotic Toughness (adding to the rage bonus to Constitution) and Chaotic Resilience (adding the ability to expend a use of rage to gain temporary damage reduction), this prestige class would definitely appeal to the barbarian of the group.
Accompanying the prestige class is a handful of feats with the chaotic subtype. These feats (like Chaotic Vitality, Chaotic Sprint and Chaotic Reflexes) all use the character?s rage ability to produce other beneficial effects (like adding a +3 to Fortitude saves, adding a +10 bonus to speed or adding a +3 to Reflex saves, respectively). The feat Chaotic Mind, which, here, exchanges a use of a character?s rage for a +3 to Will saves, sticks out since there?s already a feat called Chaotic Mind created by Wizards of the Coast (from their ?Expanded Psionics Handbook?); a more unique name for this feat could have been chosen.
This ?Poor Gamer?s Almanac? is peppered throughout with ads and preview material for other Alea Publishing Group products. All in all, it is a solid supplement, and provides a variety of rules material that can be used at your game table.<br><br>
<b>LIKED</b>: ?Poor Gamer?s Almanac? has a unified look ? the artwork of both the articles and the advertisements, the layout of the magazine, etc. is unified and helps to present a cohesive product. The variety of types of articles in this issue - pirate weapons, enhanced hell hounds and improved ?faerie fire? spells - makes this not just a supplement for just one gamer, but rather for an entire gaming table?s worth of gamers. Also, the price is perfect - it's free!<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: While most of this supplement is well-edited and free of grammatical or typographical errors, the opening ?Thoughts From the Publisher? is scattered with incorrect wording or spelling and incomplete sentences. Also, in the ?Thoughts From the Publisher,? mention is made of the Alea Publishing Group?s upcoming 2d6 String System. However, more information about what this is can be gleaned from the full-page ad on a preceding page (it looks to be some sort of collectible card game with statistics that can be used for a table-top RPG). <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>
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