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I'm sure that this is a cool tool. However, it won't run on a mac.
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Excellent info for a ghostbusting start-up company. I plan to use ExorSystems, Inc. as a rival company in my Ghosbusters campaign.
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This is a solid product for publishers with a variety of beasties. I was a little nervous to purchase at first as the preview link was dead. I wasn't sure what I would get, however all of those fears were put aside when I got to see the product upon purchase. Definitely worth the money. A few of the images were a bit too heavy on the cartoon side of design for my purposes. Still, a good investment in which I plan on getting quite a bit of longevity out of.
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Monsters, Monsters, Monsters..... you always need foes for you PCs. As a long time DM I am glad that there are so many monster book out there as you need to throw something unexpected at PCs.... especially with a long time group that is use to the usual encounters.
Octavirate provides a nice little compendium with good artwork and some gems to throw at your party. Heck, not only is this book great for a DM, but as a spellcaster... cough "Summoners/Necromancers"... you may find some creatures you might want to add to you lists.
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Unbeatable for the price. Sure there are a few things I will never use, but overall really nice lineart of very unique monsters. I'm shocked this is the first review for this product as it really is worth crowing about! Nice mix of aliens, fantasy classics, new monsters (which could fit fantasy or sci-fi), a few whimsical pieces, a few dinosaurs- something for every taste.
Highly recommended!
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For the price, it's a huge collection of your basic monsters and therefore a good deal. Many of the pieces are very good quality, but some are cartoony or not as crisp as one would like.
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Wonderful fun! Even with the AD&D programming, its not hard to go back in and modify some things to bring them up to code with 3.5 systems. Quite entertaining, great kindling for the imagination!
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This PDF is an excellent resource for those interested in running a Pokemon or Digimon style game. With the templates and a few good MM type books, you can easily populate your campaign with a variety of 'collectabeasts' or 'virtuabeasts'. However, the DM would have to do alot of world building and such himself, as this PDF is more aimed as a starting point or one shot. Nevertheless, heartily recommended.
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This programs is actually pretty cool.......while I personally dont use it for AD&D, so the generated NPC's and monsters are not particularly useful to me, the name generater (particularly the monster one) are invaluable when I want to get ideas. My favorite so far has been the giant flaming undead bear................made for a very memorable encounter.
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This is a great setting on it’s own, but I admit to buying it to run a Ghostbusters game at my local gaming store.
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I really enjoy Octavirate's art and have used there work in almost all of my pieces. I've purchased their stock art collections 1 through 11 and while I haven't used all of it, I'm always impressed with their line art, black and white style. it's easy to work with and blend into my documents. I'll definitely continue to support them by purchasing their stock collections.
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Octavirate Presents: Lethal Lexicon 2 is very reminiscent of a sequel to a spoof movie such as Airplane or Naked Gun. The second crop of jokes never hit the same mark and you can not loose the been there done that feeling.
The Lethal Lexicon series, produced by Octavirate, are monster books that contain a dozen or so creatures that play off of puns. The second book in the series contains 20 baddies with names such as Poultrygeist and Space Beagle. The PDF is 43 pages long. Each description is informative in both flavor and text.
The minus about such a book is that in a serious campaign, such creatures are pretty much unusable on a consistent basis, so having more than one book of this type is pointless unless you like the humor. The abilities are creative but after a while of reading it feels kind of corny and redundant.
For the DM
If you are going for over exaggerated humor in our campaign, by all means this is a great purchase. But if you are trying to set any type of serious mood you will want to use some of these sparingly. As an old school Michael Jackson fan, I loved Rhythmic Dead. The most out of all the creatures in the book. They are undead whom break into choreographed dance. Another one that was a tad more usable was Fauxfire, an ooze that takes the shape of fire to capture its prey.
The Iron Word
Detailed descriptions and creativity litter the book, but I question the usability of it in a normal campaign. It is worth having at least one of these books in your library to add needed humor in a campaign, but too many of these showing up and your players will not know what to take seriously. .
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Octavirate Presents: Lethal Lexicon Volume 2 is a 43 page d20 pdf product. Lethal Lexicon Volume 2 is the second Lethal Lexicon product, both of these products featuring classic new monsters, strange monster parodies and other interesting and humorous creatures for you roleplaying game. Lethal Lexicon is part of the Ocavirate Presents series of mini-game supplements, covering a wide range of different topics that can readily be inserted into your game. This product is compatible with the revised d20 core rules.
Lethal Lexicon Volume 2 comes as a single pdf file containing more than 25 strange monsters that cater for the needs of both the serious campaign and the humorous campaign. The product is very well presented, with an excellent and detailed cover, a complete set of bookmarks, and the wonderful addition of rules for variant systems such as Wound/Vitality points and Armor as DR. Not only does it cover variant rules systems, but ample advice is given on using these 'fantasy' creatures in other genres, such as modern or science fiction roleplaying games. Editing and layout is well done, as is the bountiful artwork found for most of the monsters in the product, and the product layout is quite retro-style. Mechanics is excellent as well, with very few errors contained in the stat blocks, and new mechanics clear and concise. Overall, very good presentation.
Monsters are the staple food for any DM's diet. This product contains a selection of the rather bizarre, unusual, and sometimes downright humorous monsters, and probably some that would make most DMs choke. And to get some idea of what's meant by that, you just need to take a look at some of the creatures found in this product - the dread mascot, an accident prone creature that follows a party around, a mock turtle straight out of Alice in Wonderland, a dire penguin, more monster crossbreeds that you can care to imagine, the infamous chicken swarm (or other semi-flightless food-animal), and even the rhythmic dead, creatures that could probably star in a Michael Jackson music video. The book is a delicate blend between the serious and humorous, although veering strongly towards the latter. Many DMs would be more than happy to use some of these creatures just for a laugh, although others may refrain from using them at all.
The product aims to be a throwback to an earlier age of gaming, the retro style gaming of the seventies and eighties, and in that it succeeds admirably. The layout and creatures found in the book leave one in no doubt as to the audience that it caters for. Having said that, the more modern gamer can find some use from these creatures. Gaming is after, by its very nature supposed to be fun, and one of the best ways of having fun is to laugh at the experiences of one's character in a game. And, these creatures can be serious challenges proving that sometimes even laughing can kill you.
It's hard to take this product too seriously - it’s like magical experimentation gone wrong. And I suppose in a sense that's the point. Sometimes the world is filled with strange and bizarre creatures. Lethal Lexicon is the platypus of the d20 world. Overall, this is a well presented product with humorous monsters that cater to earlier editions of gaming, but fully useful and compatible with current rules. For those looking to see the lighter side of gaming, a reminder of the past, or even to kill your players before the laughter dies, Lethal Lexicon is worth a look.
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Octavirate Presents: Lethal Lexicon Volume 2 is d20 monster book from Octavirate Games. The zipped file is slightly over twelve megabytes in size, and contains a single PDF of the product. The book itself is forty-three pages long, including a page for the cover, a page for the credits, and a page for the OGL. Full bookmarks are provided.
The second volume of the Lethal Lexicon is, like the first, fairly generous with its artwork. The cover is the only example of full-color art here, but each monster has a black and white depiction; there are no page borders. The artwork for the creatures, as well as the layout and font type, is all very reminiscent of First Edition rules. There isn’t a printer-friendly version, which is a shame, since there’s a goodly amount of art here.
Volume 2 of the Lethal Lexicon picks up where its predecessor left off, presenting monsters that are slightly off-kilter, but are no less deadly for it. Picking up with the Dread Mascot (a cowardly little creature that follows an adventuring group around, inadvertently bringing them bad luck) all the way to the Wooly Bulette, twenty-five new monsters are given here. Interestingly, several of these build off of monsters from the previous volume, such as the Endangered Half-Dragon templates being the logical extension from said dragons in the previous book.
The humor here is well-done, because it never compromises the utility of the product, but at the same times does a good job poking fun at the various tropes of the game. For example, the Sticksnake is the leftover result of all the gods getting together and collectively deciding to get rid of the spell Sticks to Snakes (hence why it’s not in the new edition of the game), the Noffig is the inverse of the griffon (and looks pretty stupid for it), and the Gelatinous Sphere actually seems more normal than its cubic counterpart.
The stats here are rock solid. I only found a few errors while looking through the book, and those seem to have been since corrected. Of course, all of the monsters have stats for the optional d20 rules that Octavirate is famous for. An appendix at the end also covers using these monsters in various alternate genres.
Altogether, the second Lethal Lexicon does as great a job as the first. There are some omissions that would have been nice, such as a listing of monsters by CR, or a printer-friendly version, but not having these isn’t a big deal. The monsters here are funny, until they start to shred your adventuring party, making them easily adaptable for humor or deadliness. Whether as joke monsters or just more freaks from the dungeon, sick the Lethal Lexicon Volume 2 on your players today!
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ExorSystems Inc. is a Modern d20 campaign setting from Octavirate Games. The zipped file is fairly sizeable, at almost forty-five megabytes, and contains a single PDF. The book itself is one hundred sixty pages long, counting a page each for the cover, credits/legal, table of contents, and OGL. Full bookmarks are also present, as is an MP3 greeting from the ExorSystems CEO to the new franchise holder.
ExorSystems has quite a bit of art spread through its pages. The cover is done in full color, as is the majority of the interior art. In a wise move, the majority of the artwork is done in bright colors with a style that ranges from cartoony to almost feeling anime-inspired in a few places. This, of course, fits with the feel of ExorSystems quite nicely. However, it also means that printing this book out could very well be a daunting task for your printer. A printer-friendly version really would have been helpful here.
So what is ExorSystems all about? The best way to sum it up is that this is Ghostbusters with the serial numbers filed off. While that isn't a bad thing, it's something that can't be overstated enough. The guys at Octavirate are quite clearly familiar with not just the Ghostbusters movies, but also the cartoons and comic books. This isn't to say there's nothing new or interesting here; far from it. The feeling of the source material has not only been perfectly preserved; but also enhanced with several new twists that are original to this book.
To summarize, the original ExorSystem members conducted paranormal research that not only led to them concluding that the rate of supernatural incidents is growing exponentially (referred to as the Ectonic Progression), but they also were able to make ion weapons to capture supernatural beings (such killing them is almost always virtually impossible). Shortly after they made this discovery, an ancient deity (Tiamat, in this case) arrived to stomp all over their town, and they put her down. Fast forward almost twenty years, and the original members have decided to make their business a multinational one, selling the rights for people to buy franchises of it set up in various areas. And the PCs can now buy their own franchise to hunt monsters, save the world, and get rich doing it.
The book is presented in the tone of being a manual sent to those who've just bought a franchise, though the book has no trouble losing this when it has to talk about meta-game concepts (such as creature type, etc). This makes it very easy to pass out various sections of it to your players as-is. It even opens with a single page advertisement for joining ExorSystems, followed by an introductory letter from the heads of the company to the new franchise owners.
The book is laid out in eight chapters. The first chapter covers the various organizations in an ExorSystems campaign. This is one place where it differs quite a bit from Ghostbusters in that there are rival organizations around, each with their own schtick. Department-7, for example, is the government's answer to the Ectonic Progression, while Mithra Group is also dedicated to hunting monsters, but using magic and faith instead of science.
Chapter two covers classes and occupations. Several new occupations are given, before also presenting a handful of new prestige classes. There's also a section outlining classes that are questionable for an ExorSystems game, and others that aren't appropriate at all. Likewise, chapter three covers new feats.
Chapter four covers the large variety of new equipment available in an ExorSystems game, from the ion blasters, SNAREs, and LIMBO devices that are the bread and butter of all ExorSystems agents, to things like ectotoxins and more esoteric forms of ionic weaponry. It also goes over vehicles and vehicle equipment characters can use, and even the equipment of other companies. A number of options are presented for these devices (need to make your own ion blaster? The rules for that are here), making this chapter have a very exciting feel to it.
The fifth chapter is the field guide for new ExorSystem agents. This fluff chapter isn't the longest section of the book, but it might be the single most important for getting the feel of an ExorSystem campaign. It lays out things like the terminology of how monsters are classified (by using the Multi-Spectrum Analyzer in the preceding chapter); you can call it a demon, for example, but the pros refer to it as a Class 4 Transplanar Ectoplasmic Manifestation. This chapter also covers researching the monsters you face, the "psychology" of the dead (some but not all the monsters you face are dead people, but they don't look or act like it at all), the rules for how to be a successful paranormal exterminator, and more.
Chapter six covers new monsters. It opens with the notation of how all creatures fall into three categories: normal, paramortal, and ectoplasmic. A dozen new monsters are then given, three of which are templates (each of which has at least one sample creature); all of them also have a header that typifies their ExorSystem classification (as well as the suite of d20 variant rules that Octavirate is famous for). Beyond all that, the monsters do a great job of capturing the feel of the game; these are dangerous, but oftentimes kooky, and cover a broad and seemingly bizarre range of foes. My favorite, for example, is the Glam Reaper, a dead glam rock star who is upset that his brand of music is deader than he is. He now appears among the living to rock out with his evil music, making innocent ladies into his undead groupies, on an apocalyptic quest to find more undead musicians so that they can play the heavy metal song that'll usher in the end of the world. His entry even lists how the PCs can fight him with music (either by trying to out-rock him, or by using the type of music that he's weak against), and a sidebar even suggests that the GM and a player face off in a few rounds of Guitar Hero to simulate a musical battle between the Reaper and a PC. Needless to say, this is beyond cool. The chapter closes out with a more detailed breakdown of how monsters in an ExorSystems game are very hard to permanently kill, and a long listing of supernatural hazards that can be faced instead of (or in addition to) monsters.
Chapter seven is a list of NPCs by organization. There are a sizable number of characters here, all with backgrounds and tactics given as well as stats. Several of the CRs seemed to be off, however, but this is easy to fix. At the end of the chapter are generic stat blocks for cultists, kids, teens, and adults who just happen to be standing around. While it's good to have these here, I wonder if there are a few too many stat blocks for these faceless supporting characters.
The last chapter covers other ways to run an ExorSystems game. Discussion is given towards making the game darker, as well as in other genres. Running the game in Fantasy d20 is given expanded coverage in a mini-campaign called Banishers. The idea is that monsters came to a "normal" fantasy world when a special stone fell from the sky. Now, pieces of that meteoric crystal are used to make magic weapons to imprison the monstrosities.
All in all, ExorSystems Inc. does a spectacular job bringing the Ghostbusters sub-genre to your d20 game. The stats are solid, the new equipment is expansive, and the listing of new monsters and rival departments, along with other adventure hooks, gives you plenty of adventuring to do. The ExorSystems campaign setting presents a multitude of ideas and possibilities for not just adventuring, but for adventuring in style. It's time to save the world, and present it with a hefty bill after doing so.
<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: The presentation for being a scientific spook-hunter is excellently done! From the stats for weapons and monsters to the fluff on how to get down the feel of an ExorSystems game, this book spared no expense in what it presented.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: There were a few minor errors that cropped up (such as NPCs with incorrect CRs). Also, a printer-friendly version would have been nice.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>
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