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TBAH is your typical fan-fare game supplement into any D20 system, a no frills flight into what's mundane and what's unique in the "super-hero meets D20 Modern" gaming experience. Simply put: it is a sizable product in need of some GM-renovation, artistic talent, and huge chunks of time to read, learn, and understand before incorporating into your current D20 / Super Hero game.
APPEARANCE: The layout suffers greatly by lacking any decent art or design elements. This book is not appealing to the eye at all -- every figure in the book is either sketchy or simple line art. The cover is by far the best piece of art this book has to offer.
TEXT READING: TBAH contains just under 276 pages because the last few pages are blank. The text itself reads like any standard D20 book you may already have. It follows the formula of D20 Modern or DaD 3.5 -- it's thick and tedious. It will take a high-school or better education to play this game to it's fullest potential, which is not necessarily a "bad thing" (it's just a limit of this game supplement that you need to be aware of.)
INTEGRATION / GAME PLAY: This is where TBAH will either shine or fall. There is a lot of information within these pages, but it seems to be the basic information you have in the D20 Modern game book. (In fact, if Venture Land Games had included a brief character creation section, you would not have a game supplement -- you would have a stand-alone game). Having this much detail can be a good thing or a very bad thing, depending on if you don't mind your Power Blast taking 10 minutes to calculate whether or not you blasted your opponent into the next block! For me, this game is too detailed, much like most D20 products: the layout and text prevent the reader from easily skimming or weeding out the unnecessary information. (It's almost as if you need to take college courses just to get a broad, firm understanding of the rules as a whole. Most people don't have that much time to learn all this stuff.)
CONCLUSION: It is a boring, bland, over-whelming treatment of the super-hero gaming experience. You will need a firm grasp of the D20 system to understand it and use it, unless you like to :swipe n swap" things between games. You will also need to type a few more charts, indicating page numbers and brief information, so that if you want to use a rule from this book, you can quickly find what page it is on -- or, you can buy many folders for the many character booklets you will be writing for each character...
For a person who already has a plethora of super-hero products and D20 products, it would be easier and cheaper to just add elements to your D20 Modern game or True20 game, versus spending 13 dollars for this PDF book. If you are not the creative type and you don't mind taking 3 to 5 rolls just to see if you cross the street or not, then this supplement may be for you. (sarcasm)
- The 5 point rating indicates the value of this product for the money spent. The review above gives you the reason for the rating. Remember that a negative review may be offensive, but then again, it's offensive to spend over 7 dollars on books that lack any artistic effort or are this hard to sift through the fluff in order to organize and use the information. I have said it before -- I will say it again -- not everyone is a graphic artist and not everyone is a creative writer. RPGs should be artistic and creative if they are this detailed and drawn-out with the information presented. There needs to be a REASON to read this much text and information.
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