I'd love to give this a 3.5 stars for review, but this is the best I can do.
After waiting for the GM book in the Inquisitor set for awhile, I bought the PDF as soon as it went up for sale. I'd been eagerly waiting to see what kind of new content we might see come down, particularly in NPC stat-blocks.
The impressions I've got after reading it a bit is ... eh?
Don't get me wrong, there are neat and useful inclusions here in this book. The details of the various philosophies of the Inquisition and its inner workings, the Conclaves and framework of the Heresies Macharius campaign, etc. There's also a fairly good chunk of plot hooks and ideas floating around in here as well.
The book, however, falls down in two notable spots for me.
1: A dozen pages are taken up with premade patron inquisitors for use, and yet more pages used in premade contacts. I understand that the Patron system is one of IM's features, but spending 12 pages on premades just feels like filler, and same goes for the contacts. There's other spots as well that have that same impression.
2: The Bestiary, or lack there of. There are 8 NPC enemy stat-blocks in the Bestiary (scattered seemingly randomly between a few xenos, some daemons, and a couple heretics. Beyond that, there is about 12 or so stat-blocks for other enemies in the Sector Threats section, including named characters. That's it. If this book is setting a precedent, than IM is REALLY going to need a Bestiary before long.
All told, I have an appreciation for this book, as well as disappointment.
The lore is great to have, there's plenty of useful charts and tables for the GM, there's plenty of plot hooks for inspiration, and even the Heresies Macharius idea is interesting.
At the same time, it spends pages on what kinda comes off as some filler info that isn't strictly needed unless you're running on the premade version of the campaign, and is sorely lacking in other areas where it feels like IM is struggling like the bestiary.
Maybe this book will warm on me further in time, but for the moment? It doesn't quite come off as the ideal book I was waiting for.
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