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Heroes of Terra: The Mushroom War
by Minrocheem [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/14/2023 23:48:07

The concept is great - essentially what if the Super Mario Bros Movieie was a steampunk swords and sorcery pulp adventure setting instead of a dystopian cyberpunk setting.

The graphic design is gorgeous and extremely usable. It has an art-deco style with clean lines, well organized charts, and clearly delineated sections. Every entry in the Table of Contents is a clickable link that takes you straight to that section.

The setting is well detailed and laid out, and the new options are well presented and organized. It gives helpful tips for where and how to fit the default Savage Worlds material into its world (like suggesting you use the cat stats for a compsognathus)

This may well be my favorite 3rd party Savage Setting, if not my favorite Savage Setting in general.

The only thing I take issue with is that there is a strange skip in page numbers at the beginning of Chapter 6 in the PDF version, but not the Physical version, and the Table of Contents references the skipped page numbers, meaning that the Table of Contents is off by about 5 pages in the physical edition. Not a big enough problem to knock a star off, but worth noting.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Heroes of Terra: The Mushroom War
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Savage Worlds: An Omnibus of Opponents
by Rodger A. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/20/2023 02:23:18

good value for the money, drawback was that the front and back covers and the second blank page are numbered meaning that when printing the page numbers don't match the pdf page numbers. The file is locked so these cannot be altered.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Savage Worlds: An Omnibus of Opponents
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Savage Worlds: An Omnibus of Opponents
by Charles H. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/17/2022 14:53:53

Has new abilities and passives for monsters ive since added to my collectioncollectioncollection desiringdesiring more from fantasy companion.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Heroes of Terra: Player's Guide to the Mushroom War
by Cyril R. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 09/15/2020 17:18:33

Excellent book! The product is pleasant and easy to read. Layout and art are just gorgious. Rules are clear and precise.

A fantasy setting for the last edition of Savage Worlds? Nice! But I never played the Mario settings. Will I still be able to play the setting? Yes, indeed! Sure, there are some elements that reminds me of what I saw/heard of the video game, but the setting also feels like its own thing that can be played without any reference to the game. It sounds like a gentle, poetic fantasy, with room for epicness and heroism.

Great work!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Heroes of Terra: Player's Guide to the Mushroom War
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Heroes of Terra Jumpstart Edition
by Robert B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/16/2019 16:32:01

I love this setting! My group is looking to play this for many reasons. The idea of playing in Mario World just thrills them.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Heroes of Terra Jumpstart Edition
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Fantasy Roleplaying: An Omnibus of Opponents
by Tim B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/19/2016 13:03:32

A neuronphaser.com review.

Form (3/5)

An Omnibus of Opponents is available as both a PDF and as a print-on-demand format from DriveThruRPG; this review concerns the PDF.

Clocking in at 83 pages, the PDF is cleanly organized and formatted in a two-column style with artwork for several of the monsters and NPCs presented. It ends with the very useful indexes of:

  • All Opponents by Level
  • Alphabetical Index

The monster artwork is top-notch, but not everything is depicted, which is a pet peeve of mine, even though several monsters are fantasy RPG standards. Books like this just cry out for more artwork, and that’s hard on an indie publisher to afford. The border art mimics that of the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide, which is a bit drab for my tastes, but doesn’t detract from the work, either.

Overall, it’s a handsome book and the provided indexes make navigating it a breeze. The PDF doesn’t feature bookmarks and the indexes aren’t clickable, which is a minor annoyance, and there’s no Table of Contents…but there’s effectively just an introduction and two chapters, one of monsters (90% of the book) and one of NPC opponents, so…not really a huge deal.

Content (5/5)

An Omnibus of Opponents is a supplemental monster and NPC book for Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying, which appears in the Cortex Plus Hacker’s Guide. There are ~42 monsters in the Hacker’s Guide; this book adds about ~120 more, which gives us something close to what the old school Monster Manuals for D&D contained.

Whereas the Hacker’s Guide stuck to the D&D fantasy milieu pretty closely, Omnibus gets a little more experimental with its roster in a few points, though it too includes some classics and some alternatives: chimera, an orc shaman, some dragons, the rakshasa, and a rogue necromancer all make appearances, and so too does the Chupacabra, several folklore monsters like the kitsune and Yuki-Onna, and a few silly or bizarre monsters like the drop bear (literally a bear that drops on people from trees and splats them) and Star Jelly (which are really just flumphs by another name).

Let’s go chapter-by-chapter.

Introduction

The introduction notes that there’s some bizarre entries and calls attention to them, but spends the bulk of its time covering Mobs and Large Scale Threats, and then talking a bit on Encounter Balance in Cortex Plus. The author’s experience with the game shines through, expertly covering both the mechanical aspects of gameplay by simplifying the process of turning existing monster statblocks into Mobs or Large Scale Threats, as well as giving some great advice on encounter building. Some may find it unfortunate that Cortex Plus is less “systematic” in its approach to encounters than games like D&D’s later editions, but with the advice Jeremy provides, it becomes clear how to work with the more narrative aspects of Cortex Plus.

Critters and Creeps

This chapter is the opening of the monster entries, and it’s obvious just how much Jeremy sticks to the script with regard to statblocks: the only change in formatting is moving Specialties closer to the top of the monster entry. Additionally, you’ll find that there are non-monster entries in the form of traps, such as the Bear Trap. No surprises in terms of formatting, and that’s great because we like consistency.

A good number of the monsters — whether old standbys or more bizarre creations — use traits and SFX that are pretty standard fare for what you’ve seen in Fantasy Heroic already, just in different combinations to more thematically represent the creature in question. But there are plenty of monsters that mix things up a little more than you might think, or find unique ways to stand out from their “classic” representations in other RPGs or in folklore. So, let’s go over some highlights and stand-out monsters, shall we?

Highlights and interesting call-outs include:

There’s a couple variations on dragons, so you can get them at a few different Levels (faerie dragons, hatchling, adult dragon). There’s also dragon-related monsters like Dragonkin (half-dragons or dragonborn, depending on your origin of choice) and Dracolisk.

A number of otherwise copyright-protected monsters or ones whose names are closely associated with other games (::cough:: D&D ::cough:) get into the book via artful renaming and reskinning: Aquatic Dominator (aboleth), Arachnaur (drider), Paradox Hound (evil blink dog), Shimmer Cat (displacer beast), Mycelian (myconids), Star Jelly (flumphs), among others.

Some monsters take the form of myth and folklore that isn’t as popularized in fantasy RPGs, such as the Gorgon (medusa), Lamia (a snake-woman rather than D&D’s lion-woman), Rakshasa, and a few others.

There are some really bizarre, sometimes silly monsters. Check out the Chronovore (a time paradox given form), Drop Bears (adorable koalas that eat people’s faces off after falling on them), Gold Gorgers (metal-eating badgers), Hidebehind (a creature so busy hiding it suffers penalties for doing so on Reactions), and the Mace Mollusk (D&D’s flail snail).

Some cool “alternative” folklore monsters include: Dullahan (the headless horseman), Kitsune, Penanggalan, Punkinhead, Rokurokubi, Jackalope.

The Cthulhu Mythos gets some call-outs: Deep Ones, Shoggoth, and Yuggothian Crustacean.

There are some fun mechanics, like the Will o’Wisp’s Lure (splitting the party also creates an additional environmental Complication), several Social-based abilities (monsters that rely on intimidation or riddles, like the Sphinx), the Sky Whale’s Radar Sense (re-rolling a Reaction and adding Senses dice), and the Reaper’s Touch of Death (inflicting Trauma after Taking Out an opponent).

All in all, the selection shows a strong mix of serious and fun, silly and terrifying, and a masterful knowledge of the rules for giving monsters a unique feel and strong mechanics.

Monsters in Human Flesh

This chapter covers the NPCs, which in this case are fully fleshed out opponent statblocks in the same vein as monsters. It provides a little advice on fleshing out these characters, but nothing in the way of random tables or lists of potential quirks and traits.

There are 7 in total:

  • Assassin for Hire
  • Black Knight
  • Criminal Overlord
  • Rogue Necromancer
  • Street Tough
  • Vampire Hunter
  • Wandering Swordsman

This roster leaves you wanting more, especially in the “not just a black-and-white villain” realm. For more political campaigns there should be various guild masters and royal this or that, and a few more variations on spellcasters would be nice. But what’s there is great, so I can’t knock the product for my unrestrained feelings of greed!

Indexes

There are two indexes that close out the book.

All Opponents By Level. This index sorts the monsters by Level Die. That’s exactly like sorting D&D monsters by Challenge Rating, and is a fantastic resource for balancing encounters and looking for monsters that fit into thematic niches like “minion” or “low-level meany” all the way up to “Big Bad End Guy” or “elite henchmen of the villain.” Good stuff.

Alphabetical Index. Since there’s no Table of Contents, this A to Z index of monster listings will serve as your primary reference point for navigating the book on the fly. I couldn’t find any missing entries, so it looks like it’ll work perfectly!

Read more reviews like this and get RPG tips, tricks, and supplements for a variety of games at neuronphaser.com.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Fantasy Roleplaying: An Omnibus of Opponents
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Fantasy Roleplaying: A Registry of Rules
by Tim B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/06/2016 17:15:48

A neuronphaser.com review.

Form (4/5)

I've got the PDF version, but there's also a softcover Print-On-Demand version for purchase through DriveThruRPG as well.

The PDF is incredibly clean in layout: there were only maybe two very minor editing mistakes (a missing or swapped word, which is amazing considering there was no editor brought on!), and the artwork is used to great effect. Full-page images break up various chapters, and many great illustrations accompany various character options like races and classes, as well as other appropriate rules sections. The artwork varies in style, but the tone tends to get it right: this is a work about a fairly "generic" ruleset of Fantasy Heroic action (duh!), so it's cool that some artwork leans towards pulp-style characters, while other pieces are comic booky and still others show a world of fantastic-yet-seemingly-ancient technology plopped into the middle of a sword & sorcery gaggle of characters. I quite like the variety.

I knocked a star off because the general use of large margins and the similarity in border styles to the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide work against the book a little bit. Not a lot. It's just that there's an awful lot of white space throughout the book, too much in my opinion, and the reliance on the Hacker's Guide style of drab blue gradients on the very edge of each page doesn't really mesh with the artwork I described above. It gives the jarring impression of a great fantasy book with a weird modern or even sci-fi-feeling border. Not sure if that was a "look and feel" thing enforced by the Cortex Plus Official License (remember, this book came out before the Cortex Plus Community Agreement that now exists on DriveThruRPG), but it's not optimal.

Content (5/5)

Fantasy Roleplaying: A Registry of Rules includes four chapters of material.

The Introduction is actually a pretty thought-provoking little preface to this book. It notes what this book is: a pile of expansions and additional options, as well as some variant rules for the existing Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying rules that appear in the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide (PDF and POD versions available at that link if you don't know what it is!). Which is obvious. But then it tackles two metagame concepts that inform the rest of the book: "The Power of Saying 'Yes'" and defining the core conceits of "'Heroic' Roleplaying" each gets their own little section.

The first section talks about the author's introduction to RPGs coming at a time -- and/or in specific groups -- where saying "No!" was common. This experience echoes throughout the RPG field in many ways, and while rarely codified, it's much talked about in game theory forums. I'll simply add that Puckett does a great job of describing why and how Cortex Plus as a whole embraces the "Say Yes" style of gaming, where players have authorial power over the story elements of gameplay (in the form of Plot Points) and how turning "No!" into "Yes, but..." or "Yes, and..." speaks much better to the play style of Cortex Plus as a whole.

The second section explains that the core conceit of Fantasy Heroic Roleplaying is the "Heroic" part, and that the levels of fantasy -- low fantasy sword & sandals stuff all the way up to grand, epic Final Fantasy-style flying ships and cities and summoning gods -- are malleable. A default level of fantasy (D&D-ish, high-ish fantasy) is certainly established in the rules for Fantasy Heroic, but this book does offer hints and tips on playing with that portion of the game's conceits, which is great discussion for folks that maybe don't have a wide breadth of RPG play experiences and maybe don't know how to dial certain things up or down. Either way, it promotes open discussion between players and GM at all points of the decision-making process, from initial prep and throughout play.

Chapter 1: Character Options provides new Background Power Sets (which are strictly all new playable races), new Class Power Sets (covering additional D&D classes not seen in the Hacker's Guide as well as many new ones informed by console video gaming and other fantasy RPGs), and 10 generic packages of Milestones.

The Background and Class Power Sets are great additions, all of them balanced to the existing ones based on a design rubric that Puckett pulled directly from the Hacker's Guide and spells out in the next chapter. Admittedly, there are a couple areas where the rules of this get "broken" ever so slightly, but these spots are never in a manner that seems like it would unbalance play, and more importantly, they are pretty clear when they crop up. Especially persnickety GMs and Players will easily find this stuff and tweak it to their wants and needs. Each Power Set comes with the the core features (a few Powers generally rated D6-D8), an SFX or two, and a Limit or two. Every single one also gets an Advancements section with suggested Traits (usually Powers) to add as characters gain new abilities, and several more SFX (and a Limit or two when it makes sense).

The Backgrounds are:

  • Apeman. Clearly inspired by Planet of the Apes and about thirty thousand pulp stories. They are strong, slightly primitive, and can become absolutely menacing as they grow in power.
  • Beastkin. Humanoid versions of animals, like crocodile people or badgerfolk or something along those lines. This is a sort of generic version; several fully realized variations follow, showing how you can build all sorts of "furries" in a D&D manner, which happens to include several iconic D&D or fantasy races. These are: Lupine (wolf or dog people), Minotaur, and Ratling (basically Skaven or Wererats). So, really, this is 4 separate Backgrounds (yay value!).
  • Centaur. Human-torsoed horse people.
  • Dhampir. This is literally Blade, but without the daywalking ability.
  • Dragonkin. D&D's dragonborn.
  • Firbolg. Half-giants whose Advancements allow them to show some minor traits related to their giantish origin, such as Fire or Frost Giants, which is a neat twist.
  • Forgeborn. These are basically D&D's Warforged, but with a few extra options that make them slightly more android-like or construct-like, which is a cool way to have them veer off a bit more in a non-traditional direction.
  • Gorgon. These are like "minor" Medusa, who can't immediately turn anyone to stone, but instead just have poisonous snakes for hair and some cool natural weapons (which includes psychic attacks as well as potentially claws or some such). The cool thing is that the Mental Blast they have gets an Advancement option that clearly pushes it towards "turn people to stone" by inflicting Mental Stress, but doesn't outright say as much. This is a very interesting way to do it, and with the use of Persistent Complications (an optional rule in the Hacker's Guide), this could easily become an outright "turn people to stone via Complication" ability. Very neat.
  • Half-elf. Using a few Power choices in the Power Set and evocative Limits and Advancements, you can see the Half-elf really stand out as its own thing, rather than just being an Elf Lite or Human Lite.
  • Infernal. Clearly based on the Tiefling from D&D, but the Advancements section suggests much greater ties to innate magical and otherworldly powers.
  • Kobold. The classic 1st level antagonist, the kobold appears here with a great set of initial and Advancement SFX that really bring out their trapsmithing abilities.
  • Mantodean. Don't be fooled by the name, this is precisely how to model a Thri-Kreen from D&D's Dark Sun setting (among others) in Cortex Plus.
  • Metamorph. Probably inspired by Eberron's Shifter, this class is definitely more along the lines of a true doppelganger, which fits with Cortex Plus' "Let's do this, all or nothing!" approach. Obviously, dialing it back is easy, too, and all about how you frame the shapeshifting abilities.
  • Orc. No surprise that the most common badguys of Tolkien's world show up here.
  • Satyr. I'm not sure how or when such lusty beasts of sexual perversion made it into the "fun to be a playable race" column, but obviously they are the exemplars of it. Their passionate nature and extreme personalities actually translate really well for more social-focused characters through some great SFX and Limits.

The Classes are:

  • Assassin. A great class that combines the classic assassin tropes (poison, murder from the shadows) with some ninja tropes (ninja vanish!).
  • Brawler. A great way to model either the D&D grappler Monk or a street tough that relies on his fists over any weapons. Steven Seagal as a Class, basically.
  • Channeler. If you're familiar with Final Fantasy's Geomancer, this is your thing. It's like an elemental-infused Druid that controls either the elements around them or summons an actual elemental to do crazy battlefield-control effects.
  • Dancer. I never understood why this was a class that appeared in so many JRPG console games, but here it makes sense due to some great SFX that mix up the social and the physical aspects of what they can do. Part Face from the A-Team, part whirling dervish.
  • Knight. Although primarily envisioned as a mounted fighter, the SFX of this class don't explicitly depend on a horse or anything else, which turns the knight into an effective combat-focused class regardless of whether they are mounted or not. You can easily picture high fantasy games where the knight has incredible mobility due to their own innate magic, as well as a more low fantasy game where the knight is just such a skilled tactician that they don't need a mount to still know best how to fight unmounted opponents.
  • Magewright. This is a neat catch-all for an Artificer (originally from the Eberron Campaign Setting) style of class, which combines alchemy, low-level or temporary enchantments, or simply a guy that MacGyvers the hell outta stuff just lying around.
  • Paladin. Taking the Cleric's divine power and focusing it largely on combat-related abilities really does differentiate the Paladin a bit, and serves as a great example for creating other hybrid classes like a Spellsword or Blade Dancer type of thing that is always popular in D&D games.
  • Psychic. Perhaps a bit flashier than the archetypal psionic of D&D lore, these characters show a great way to create a powerful spellslinger whose magic relies on telekinesis and mental domination.
  • Sailor. This class meshes well with rules appearing in the next chapter covering boats, but don't be fooled: they are an excellent, action-oriented class that also can model a captain of a military unit, an airship pirate, or something along those lines. They may be a bit too focused on SFX that say "when on a boat," though, so keep that in mind when coming up with your campaign's themes and what character options to encourage.
  • Survivor. Kind of like a Ranger but with a tragic backstory that motivates them and powers their SFX. I imagine this is a pretty clear conceptual mirror for late-era D&Disms like the Avenger class.

The Milestones are general motivating forces, ideals, or even situations. Though these are largely written as Personal Milestones, they can easily be adapted as Quest Milestones, or simply used as additional ideas for formulating new Milestones of either kind. Each comes with a 1 XP, 3 XP, and 10 XP milestone award.

  • Ambition
  • Dangerous Liaisons
  • Enemies Accumulate
  • Honorable
  • Loner
  • Mentor
  • Pacifist
  • Protector
  • Trader
  • Violent Temper

Most of the rules in Chapter 2: Advanced Options are either optional tweaks to existing mechanics or laying bare the math behind the system to develop the art of creating new and properly balanced Backgrounds and Classes. The big add-on here is the section labeled Epic Heroism, which adds an Epic Die that the party as a whole can access to do truly crazy things.

Attributes, Specialties, and several Class Power Sets from the Hacker's Guide all receive optional and variant rules here. Attributes would be a new dice category, and there are two optional systems:

  • Triad Attributes: adding Physical, Mental, and Social attribute dice to each Player Character.
  • Traditional Attributes: adding Agility, Strength, Vitality, Awareness, Intellect, and Willpower to each Player Character.

The Specialties option is simply an alternative, longer list of Specialties that allows for a bit more differentiation between characters, and also increases the die range from D6 to D12, with an "unskilled" character rolling at D4 as the default. This also opens up the opportunity to increase Skills a bit more slowly with Advancement, which makes longer campaigns a bit more feasible, since the characters won't be maxing out their abilities nearly as quickly.

Jumping ahead a section, the final big tweak found here is the Revised Class Power Sets, which rewrites several of the Power Sets from the Hacker's Guide in order to more accurately balance them, internally. It's noted that some of these changes are minor, and that the balance isn't way off to begin with, so this is ample opportunity for GMs to consider the playstyle they want -- more gritty, more epic -- and cherry-pick to get what they want. The classes that see revisions are Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Ranger, and Thief.

Two sections feature brand new stuff: Creating Backgrounds and Classes is a section that opens up the internal checks and balances so you can create your own content, and Epic Heroism adds the aforementioned Epic Die.

Starting with the Backgrounds/Classes section, we get the "rubric" around which all Backgrounds and Classes are created, showing how many dice in Powers, how many starting SFX, guidelines on Limits and Advancement rules, and how to split up the dice if we want to create some variations among the abilities without mucking up the math. An example Class -- the Fog Knight -- is provided.

And now that Epic Die I keep mentioning. It's a short section that introduces the die, but it explains how this is fertile ground for really reinforcing the tone of the campaign and the upper limits of character abilities based on the tone set by the GM. Since it's a party die -- all characters have it at the same level -- it maintains balance, and the fact that it's an extra die sets it apart from monsters and NPCs with their Level Die. There's some discussion around SFX based on the Epic Die, and an example. Simple, innovative, and not entirely unlike the Time Die in the Hacker's Guide, but repurposed to make the Player Characters look and feel awesome.

Chapter 3: The Big Picture focuses on the typical aspects of high-level D&D play: naval travel and combat, mass combat between armies, and aspects of how kingdoms and nations might play into a campaign, whether ruled by Player Characters or simply detailed in such a way that politics and warfare play a much bigger determining factor in the state of any given location in the campaign world.

Ships and naval combat -- which can easily be repurposed for large land vehicles and airships, as discussed in the book -- are treated very much like they are in the Firefly RPG, where they have their own stats that get used in place of and in addition to the Player Character abilities relevant to a given action, maneuver, or attack. Several custom traits and SFX are presented, along with two sample ships and discussion of Player Character ownership of a boat.

Mass Combat breaks units into simplified NPC statblocks that are basically the same as Mobs, but with the addition of a Command die that helps them out...if they have a commander in the form of a PC or NPC that leads them. Outside of commanding units, the only other big change is that units cannot normally be targeted by attacks from an individual. There are of course exceptions along the lines of area of effect spells or inflicting large-scale Complications that demoralize units. Several unit statblocks round out this section.

Finally, we get to Kingdoms and Nations, which covers these regional powers as their own statblock -- with obligatory example! -- and introduces the Kingdom Phase that occurs between Quests, during downtime for the Player Characters. How the characters can influence this phase is of course mentioned, and overall this brings into a focus a lot of Specialties and Resource-building that wouldn't otherwise come up during individual Quests, so it's sort of like Transition Scenes in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, but even larger scale. And yes, there are Advancement rules for kingdoms!

Chapter 4: Treasure and Artifacts is all about introducing 33 new magic items -- ranging from staples like the Healer's Staff and the Shield Brooch to more wacky items like Divine Soldier's Chassis (basically power armor) to a Rocket Pocket -- and presents a great series of tables and some discussion to go along with new SFX for building random magic items.

Let's focus yet another cool sidebar, though: Life Without Looting, which opens the chapter. This sidebar talks about all those fantasy settings that aren't big on D&D-style looting and treasure acquisition, and is yet another great grab-bag of material for GMs that want to tweak the playstyle of their campaign. Though the advice is simple -- remove looting rolls and spending XP to create permanent magic items -- the permutations are pretty big. Add in the fact that systems introduced earlier, like adding Attributes, can increase the number of dice PCs have to roll, it's very easy to keep the balance of a Fantasy Heroic game preserved even by tearing out what's normally a huge part of the D&D fantasy experience.

Read more reviews -- and get other useful RPG resources -- at neuronphaser.com



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fantasy Roleplaying: A Registry of Rules
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Creator Reply:
Wow, neuronphaser! Thanks for the truly epic review! You got a lot of what I was going for with this book, and I\'m super glad to see that it\'s still holding up pretty well, considering it was my second ever(!) professional release under my own imprint, as well as my second ever attempt at doing layout and art direction. The decision to make both of these books look like the Hacker\'s Guide wasn\'t strictly speaking enforced, but there was a conversation in which I and the MWP folks agreed that it was best to keep the look consistent with the line while not stepping directly on their trade dress. If I were to redo this book, it would probably wind up with way thinner margins--and get about 15 new pages of material, since I can\'t stop writing for Heroic to save my life. Hopefully folks will get to see some of that in my next couple of releases under the Community Content license! ^_^
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Fantasy Roleplaying: An Omnibus of Opponents
by Andy C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/18/2016 08:55:33

Nice collection of beasties for the Fantasy Heroic hack of Cortex Plus.

A few non-monster NPCs are included but some more would be appreciated.

Layout is a normal two column affair.

The formatting of each opponent uses a similar standard to the one from the Cortex Plus Hacker's Guide, though Specialities have been moved from the bottom of the stat block to before the power set.

Name Level dX Distinctions Specialties Power Set: Powers SFX Limit

Unfortunately there are a large number of pages that do not have selectable text, which makes it much less useful for picking out individual monsters.

There are no bookmarks and the index does not contain clickable links.

The file size is also unusually large, 50MB for 83 pages.

Overall it will be useful but not as great as it could be. Fixes to the text selection and index issues would certainly raise the rating.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Fantasy Roleplaying: An Omnibus of Opponents
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Fantasy Roleplaying: A Registry of Rules
by A customer [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/26/2015 17:31:03

Update The publisher of this book promptly addressed all of the problems I had with the pdf.

This is a great source book, full of new power sets but also containing some nicely crunchy discussions about designing new power sets or customizing the core rules structure of FHRPG.

Also has a generous quantity of colorful artwork.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fantasy Roleplaying: A Registry of Rules
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Fantasy Roleplaying: A Registry of Rules
by Chad S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/18/2015 23:48:47

Another very solid entry for Cortex Heroic Fantasy games. I was very happy with the selection of backgrounds and classes, along with the guidelines for making your own. I wasn't originally drawn to ships or mass combat, but they were very well done and got me thinking about how to incorporate them in my own game.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fantasy Roleplaying: An Omnibus of Opponents
by Chad S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 04/16/2015 22:58:56

This is very well done and useful for two big reasons. First, it's a nice collection of the standards for a fantasy game. Cortex Plus really hasn't had that up to now, apart from the ones in the Hacker's Guide. Second, I saw a number of examples of the book that showed me good ways to replicate powers or abilities in making my own creatures.



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[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fantasy Roleplaying: An Omnibus of Opponents
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