unplayable. Simply because it is missing the class tables and all the abilities give no mention of what level the abilities are gained. This is a major piece of missing info!!

A fun set of rules for "grittier" magic for the Pathfinder game, including a system for spell failure, spell critical fumbles and hits, methods for increasing the chance of success, magical areas with "charges" that bestow benefits to spellcasters, rituals, an alternate method of magical skill progression, spell poisoning, and a Scholar class with appropriate skills and feats.

This resource reminds me of my own attempts, years ago, to create spell failure rules for AD&D (which itself was a pretty miserable fumble). The info contained is clear and straightforward, and most of it could be converted to many other RPGs easily. There is no art other than the cover, which just leaves room for more "grittiness."

In over two years since its debut, Pathfinder hasn’t tried to stretch its wings very much where the genre of the game is concerned; it’s all high-fantasy, all the time. While many gamers may not miss this, those looking to take their favorite rules into another style of game likely feel that they’re missing out. It’s with those gamers in mind that Eridanus Books presents their sci-fi Pathfinder RPG, Veil of Truth. Let’s peek behind the veil and see what’s waiting there.

At twenty-eight pages long, Veil of Truth’s presentation is something of an exercise in minimalism. There are no bookmarks here, nor hyperlinks. The interior art is all black and white, and is passable, though a few of the illustrations of the alien races were slightly pixilated. All of the pages have plain white backgrounds, with no borders of any kind, making the book mostly printer-friendly as a default.

The text here is notably dense. While I wasn’t sure if the word font here was smaller than in other books, it may be that a lot of the visual presentation is helped by the pictures, tables, and sidebars that frequently pop up. It was only in the book’s last section, when most of these went away, that I felt like I was being shown a thick wall of text.

Veil of Truth takes the design principle that Pathfinder is, as far as a sci-fi RPG goes, mostly complete save only for some additions, subtractions, and re-skinning certain things. The first chapter reminds us of this in regards to races, even as it presents seven new ones. These races are presented with full Core Rulebook-style treatment, and do a good job of describing them. In terms of how they “feel,” six out of seven are humanoid in body type (though they’re apparently all of the humanoid creature type), so there’s little here that is too far removed from the old “humans with funny hats” meme.

It’s at the classes chapter that we start to see just how much Veil of Truth acts as a supplement to Pathfinder. There are six classes available, all of which are essentially archetypes of existing classes. The engineer, for example, is a variant of the Advanced Player’s Guide’s summoner, while the psion is a sorcerer, etc.

By itself, this is a pretty good idea. However, these go a bit further than most archetypes, to the point where it’s almost more worthwhile to call them alternate classes, a la the ninja and samurai. Unfortunately, given that this is the case, the book’s minimalist style works against it here, as there are no class tables to codify what class features are earned when; it’s all descriptions. It’s also notable that the relative power of the classes is altered somewhat in these new presentations, largely because “spellcasting” (which is really the use of psionic powers, nanites, and retroviruses) is devalued here – a lot of the more blatant attack spells (e.g. fireball, lightning bolt) simply aren’t available. The default assumption seems to be that because of this, classes that give away their spellcasting altogether (e.g. the aforementioned engineer), need less-powerful alternates to replace them. As such, while only the psion is a true caster class, you may appreciate the reduced overall power a lot of the classes have here.

Unfortunately, the book seems to be missing a section or two, and it’s in this chapter that we first get a clue as to that. The psion’s psychic manifestion abilities make reference to spending psionic power points, for example, but while it says it refers to these more in the book’s “third chapter” (and even references a table found there) said chapter is nowhere to be found; it doesn’t help that there are no chapter numbers here anyway. I also took issue with how the psion is supposed to gain a discipline power every odd level, but some of the disciplines had less than ten powers to select to begin with – that’s just poor design.

The book’s third section is a one-page coverage of skills in Veil of Truth. There’s no discussion of what skills are deleted here, save for noting the alternate applications of a few skills (e.g. Fly, Ride, etc.) and bringing in a few alternate skills (e.g. Psionics rather than Spellcraft). I should mention that the Psionics skill, which is barred from use by characters that don’t have it as a class skill (there’s a feat for that, by the way), actually lets you pull off some abilities that replicate actual spells (e.g. detect thoughts, cure light wounds) though only a few times per day. This is a notable bump in power, enough so that even with a feat-tax on most characters, it’s a must-have skill (especially since all of its uses are against static DCs).

Feats are similarly single-paged in their display, and while several are replacements for normal Pathfinder feats, a number are specific to the new races presented earlier.

The equipment chapter may be the most fun part of the book, simply because it’s cool to see a bunch of high-tech guns, and other items, in Pathfinder. These all fall into one of three new types of weapon proficiency, and all have a description, but there’s no listing as to whether they’re one- or two-handed, which is an oversight. There are also notably few armors, simply because most guns attack your touch AC at closer ranges anyway (a la the gunslinger).

It’s after these that the book begins to show some real innovation, as it then introduces us to ultratech items. It may sound odd to call these innovative, as they’re essentially re-skinned magic items, but there are some interesting spins on them here. For example, the armors here all have various spells that can be used on the wearer, but only so many before they have to be recharged; other ultratechs also need recharging, but are so large that they can only be mounted on a vehicle or be found as part of a building.

The last section of the book presents the Veil of Truth campaign setting proper. I found it to be a nice change of pace from the typical campaigns where humans are a dominant power. The gist of this is that Earth was basically treated as a nature preserve by aliens that were already aware of us, and gave us time to develop not out of altruism, but simply because they knew that most races that managed to make contact with galactic society tended to self-destruct from the extreme culture shock. Humans nearly did, but have managed to avoid total self-annihilation, and are slowly coming back from the brink. There’s more nuance than that, of course, and more information on the greater backdrop, but it’s still a pretty minimalist presentation – all the better for GMs to fill things in as they go along.

Overall, I found Veil of Truth to be a book that was defined almost as much by what isn’t here as what is. There’s nothing regarding starships or starship combat, for example, let alone things like planet-busting weapons, robots and cyborgs, genetic engineering, etc. I can respect that they stuck to adapting the Pathfinder rules as much as possible, but there are some things that aren’t so easily brought into a sci-fi game by just re-flavor-texting something from a fantasy genre. The fact that there are also problems with some missing things (mostly related to the psion’s use of psychic powers and abilities), and this book seems to serve more as a template for a sci-fi Pathfinder game than a fully-fledged game unto itself. Ultimately, there are a lot of ways to do sci-fi, but I wish there was a little more truth behind the Veil.

In Pathfinder, magic seems fairly mutable. After all, there’s a plethora of spells already, and if you start looking at PF-compatible products, that amount skyrockets dramatically; surely whatever magical effect you’re looking for is easily found somewhere, right? Well yes, if you’re looking for a given spell effect…but not so much if you want the actual method of casting to be different. In that case, your options shrink dramatically. If you want magic to be a rare, dangerous thing that’s corruptive and unpredictable, then there isn’t much out there for you…until Eridanus Books came along with Grittier Magic, a sourcebook that puts the risk back into your magic. Let’s take a look inside.

Grittier Magic is a sixteen-page PDF file, including a page for the cover and a page for the OGL. It has no bookmarks, which I frown on but isn’t a big deal given its page-count and that it has a table of contents. It also has very little artwork to speak of; while the cover image is quite cool, the only other piece of work is a black-and-white version of the cover character about halfway through the book.

It should also be noted that Grittier Magic is complementary to Eridanus Books’ other supplement, Grittier, but does not reference it. The two are separate sourcebooks that don’t reference each other at all, letting you use them independently, though they do work very well together. Like its predecessor, Grittier Magic is broken down into various sub-sections that each cover a different idea, being fairly modular in design. You can take what’s in one section and ignore the next, for the most part.

The book’s first section covers changes to actually casting a given spell. This introduces a Spellcraft check in order to successfully cast a given spell. I liked this, but I wasn’t sure about the method used for calculating the DC – I couldn’t think of a better way to set it up, but really it’s going to be pretty much a foregone conclusion that you’ll succeed at the roll when you hit the higher levels.

Beyond that, you can have a critical or fumble on this check, despite it being a skill check, if you roll a respective natural 20 or 1, with accompanying tables for the randomly-determined effect of the crit or fumble. Finally, there’s a table of actions you can take to increase your chances of making a successful Spellcraft check, which range from the innocuous (spend a full round casting it) to the rather brutal (make a human sacrifice). Again, I did like this, but the options to sacrifice your own hit points or ability points were too easily overcome; saying they can’t be cured until after the spell is cast isn’t so much a restriction as it is a speed bump, since “after the spell is cast” will generally mean after your turn in the initiative count.

It should also be noted that, much to my enjoyment, the book is peppered with sidebars offering commentary on various parts of the work here. I quite enjoy those, as these “behind the curtain” sidebars are always interesting. Knowing why the author did what he did lends greater insight into the book.

The next section of the book deals with magical areas – these are various “power spots” where a certain school of magic has bonuses to Spellcraft or Use Magic Device checks on spells/magic items associated with it (such as for spellcasting as detailed in the previous section), and all other schools take a matching penalty. The level of power these bestow is also measured in charges; you can use up a power spot, though they may recharge over time.

Of course, if that’s all there was to magical areas, they’d be rather boring. Following this are various rituals that can be done in certain spots. These are all long (taking hours to enact) and have various costs to invoke them, along with requiring a successful Spellcraft check, but success can have various effects depending on what ritual is used. You can enhance your own spellcasting powers or suppress another creature’s, for example, or even drain someone’s life force to recharge an area. There are only a few rituals described here, but they’re nicely evocative.

The section on schools of magic is notably short, being only a page long. It basically lays down that arcane spellcasters only gain access to one school of magic starting out, adding another every so often as they gain levels (it treats Universal as a separate school, which I disagree with since Universal has so few spells). If you don’t have access to a given school, you can’t cast spells from it, simple as that (though you can use magic items from them, albeit with a penalty). There’s also alternate rules for selecting the same school of magic multiple times to gain bonuses to it, and being able to take penalties to keep casting spells from known schools even after running out of spells for the day.

The spell poisoning section follows, and offers an interesting idea. Basically, magic is treated similarly to radiation – the more of it you’re exposed to, the more it clings to you, and can even infect the people around you. Carrying magic items or being the subject of a spell will cause you to have higher spell poisoning (expressed in an escalating spell radiation score) and casting spells will quickly make this shoot through the roof, though you can let it dwindle away over time.

Handy charts note what magical effects (e.g. spells, magic items, etc.) cause what level of spell poisoning, while another lists the effects of it. And it was here that the system went off the rails…the chart listing spell poisoning effects were all beneficial, contrary to the flavor text. Yes, some of the listed effects could conceivably be bad, such as having a detectable aura of magic, or having your type change to aberration, but being able to use a random low-level spell and gaining bonuses to saving throws against magic aren’t bad things. I can understand why the table has these effects, but as listed nothing on it is bad or even harmful…spell poison isn’t a poison so much as a series of minor boons to a character. This table needs some reworking so that characters will actually be afraid of raising their spell poison score instead of deliberately trying to ratchet it up.

The penultimate section of the book deals with the new scholar base class. This class is, as the name suggests, meant for characters who want to focus on various forms of skill mastery. In fact, the scholar gains a truly sick amount of skill points per level, spread across a fairly wide array of class skills (not as many as the rogue, but still quite a lot). The scholar also gains a vast array of skill-based class abilities, and in particular at every even-numbered level can take a secret lore ability, which like a rogue talent is a list of various abilities which can be chosen by the character. Here, they’re broken up into various disciplines (such as alchemy, engineering, occult, etc.) but there’s nothing to say you can’t dabble across multiple fields so long as you meet the prerequisites.

While I liked the scholar, there were some parts of it that could have used some tightening up. For example, the Skill Expertise ability, which lets you reroll a skill check as a free action, is ambiguously worded about how often you can use it; if you can use it every round then it’s pretty damn powerful (and makes some secret lore abilities somewhat redundant). Likewise, having the DC for secret lore abilities be Wisdom-based when this class seems Intelligence-based is also a little odd (though maybe the author did that on purpose to keep the class from being too narrow).

But what’s really going to make people think twice about using this class is that it has the lowest base attack bonus EVAR. This guy won’t get to make multiple attacks per round unless you lay him to the absolutely highest levels, it’s that low. A sidebar addresses this, and I personally applaud Eridanus Books for departing from the standard fare here, even if it does pigeonhole the class somewhat as the skill monkey and nothing else. Still, that’s quite clearly on purpose, as the flavor text and sidebar make it clear that this is the guy who does the research that no one else can, but stays the heck away from a fight unless he’s already got it all planned out beforehand.

The book closes out with five new feats, four of which are based around slowly the accumulation of spell poison, and the last one is meant for the scholar. These are perfunctory, but still nice that they round things out a little more.

Overall, Grittier Magic does introduce some good options for spelcasting that’s narrower, more dangerous, and more subject to outside forces than standard Pathfinder fare. The addition of the scholar helps to reinforce the idea of having occult knowledge without being a spellslinger, though they may have dabbled a tiny bit. Campaigns that introduce all of these options will see their spellcasters being more akin to mortals tampering with forces that they have to wrestle for control, rather than executing a precise science. That said, I do wish the spell poison effects were revised to make them far more harmful than they are now – that’s the book’s only major flaw at this point, and largely the reason why I knocked a star off. Still, if you overlook that, Grittier Magic may be just what you need if you want magic to be something used cautiously rather than as a tool.

I'm not a Pathfinder player and haven't played D&D for years, but this supplement piqued my interest. I love the idea that magic is dangerous. I like the way it's implemented in this supplement. Having each spell cast come down to a Spellcasting roll is great, especially as the caster has options and sacrifices they can do to boost the possibility that the spell will succeed. I was slightly disappointed in the Rituals, as they basically come down to a single Spellcraft roll and GP expenditure. I would have liked them to be a more involved process. I would also have liked to see more dangers inherent in spell poisoning. While I love that someone suffering from it can poison others, I would expect more magical mutations. All in all, I love this supplement. It just may be the book that gets me to play Pathfinder.

They say that the worst vice is advice. I don’t think that’s true; it’s more accurate to say that the worst vice is unsolicited advice – after all, when you’re looking for someone to counsel you, advice can be a much-needed boon…depending on the quality of the advice you receive. In regards to Eridanus Books’ Grittier, the advice that it presents is how to make your Pathfinder game feel more “gritty” in feel.

From a technical stance, Grittier is fairly clean in its presentation. Beyond the cover graphic, there are no illustrations or page borders to be found; the entire product is simply black text on a white background (save for the rare grey sidebar). There are no bookmarks, though that’s not so bad in a thirteen-page PDF, and there is a table of contents. Likewise, copy and pasting are enabled.

What was more bothersome, however, was how often grammar errors came up throughout the book. With troubling regularity, sentence after sentence has some error of tense or syntax or conjugation; it’s never anything that inhibits understanding, but it highlights the book’s lack of an editor.

While it doesn’t explicitly use the term, Grittier’s introduction makes it immediately clear that what it’s concerned with doing is providing suggestions and mechanics to allow you to make a Pathfinder game that is – for lack of a better word – Tolkien-esque in feeling. That is, its “gritty” factor is a low-magic world where the PCs might be better than average people, but are far from being the demi-gods they are at higher levels.

This is an impulse I can certainly understand; after all, a more down-to-earth feeling for a game can encourage players to invest more in their characters’ actions (in other words, role-play better), since doing so can help to keep them alive and successful. When hack-and-slashing carries a real risk of getting you killed, particularly since there’s a lack of healing magic to go around, you tend to put a little more thought into what you do.

The first section of the book talks about leveling in a Grittier game, which basically boils down to “use E6.” For those who don’t know, E6 (aka “Epic 6”) is a fan-made document put together several years ago that basically champions a campaign model where no one (including and especially the PCs) can gain more than six character levels. After hitting that sixth level, you only advance by gaining a feat per five thousand experience points. Grittier recaps this information, but directs you to this document to get into further details of this campaign model.

This part of the book made me look askance at Grittier. It’s not because this section is wrong, per se, to adopt this model – quite frankly I agree with the advice here – but rather how it so casually makes such a major change and then directs you elsewhere for more on it. Even leaving aside that I think the E6 document itself could use some tightening up, the relevant sections and materials should have been reprinted here since E6 is Open Game Content. Directing your audience to another book, which they may never have heard of and aren’t sure where to find, is poor design.

Character classes are the subject of the next section, and it’s a pleasant surprise that it covers not only the eleven core classes, but also the six new base classes from the Advanced Player’s Guide as well. Several classes have changes recommended, while others are simply tossed out altogether as being inappropriate for a Grittier campaign (something which I applaud, since sometimes certain classes are just wrong for a campaign, and should be thrown out rather than caving to post-modern ideas of tweaking everything to fit, no matter how inappropriate it is).

Of course, this section had some problems too. Some readers may want more explanation for why certain changes or disallowances were made; you can say that the paladin doesn’t fit a Grittier game “conceptually and mechanically,” but that isn’t self-evident. I wish the book would explain how it reached that conclusion. Is it the divine spellcasting? The class abilities? Something else altogether? I don’t know, because it hasn’t told me.

Likewise, this section can be slightly punishing if you don’t have access to the Advanced Player’s Guide (and even then, certain aspects can be unclear). For example, the bard several levels of class abilities replaced with alternate abilities – at 2nd level it gains Lore Master and “Magic Lore,” which (it doesn’t tell us) is from the Archivist archetype in the APG.

Spells gets a very short section outlining some broad types of spells that you might want to remove from a Grittier game, such as summoning and alignment-based spells. Personally, I would also have put the Rituals section here, but we’ll come to that later.

The Items section is where the most alternate rules are given. The existing idea of “masterwork” weapons and armor is thrown out, and instead there’s a listing of item properties that can be added to items when they’re created (which do things like increase hardness, add +1 to AC, etc.). The more properties an item has, the more it costs, the longer and more difficult it is to make, and the more valuable it is – a table charts gradations of weapon quality by how many of craft points’ worth of properties are added.

That last sentence should have made you perk up; this section measures these item properties in terms of craft points. What exactly craft points are, how they’re used, and other important information isn’t given. It was only with some research that I realized these were alternate crafting rules from Unearthed Arcana (available over at the Hypertext SRD). Since the table still indicates the increases to cost and crafting DCs per craft points spent, it’s still possible to use these item special qualities without using craft points in your game…rather, the major problem here is that, once again, the book is referencing external material and not seeing fit to tell us where this material is coming from and how to find it.

Magic items get a page with some fairly solid guidelines for limiting their impact on a Grittier campaign. The book smartly uses GP values of items to judge how rarely they should appear, also noting that magic shops shouldn’t exist at all. It then talks about ways to limit permanent magic items so that they don’t become over-exposed (or over-powering in the campaign) and the use of one-shot magic items to help address problems should you find the lack of magic to be too stark in your game.

This part of the book was exemplary in how to provide guidance for running a low-magic game, giving clear suggestions on multiple aspects of a given topic while making the reasoning clear. There could have been a little polishing here, to be sure, but for the most part this is some great advice on how to handle the presence of magic items in a low-magic campaign.

The Rituals section is one that I had mixed feelings on. Rituals are really incantations (from Unearthed Arcana again) made simple. They’re all high-level spells that require a Spellcraft check to pull off. However, they have lengthy casting times, require hours of preparation before you can even begin casting, and have penalties for failing the Spellcraft check. Really, except possibly lifting the idea for lengthy pre-casting setup, there’s not much here that hasn’t already been done by incantations. The sole exception here is a table with things you can do to earn a bonus to your Spellcraft check, which admittedly provides for some nice ideas – a human sacrifice for a +5 bonus, hm?

The book’s last section talks about changes to combat, and notwithstanding classes gets more discussion than anything else. Several changes are made, with the big one being dealing damage – a minor tweak to the nonlethal damage rules now makes being staggered come into play a lot sooner. I liked this idea, since it is a simple way to have characters lose effectiveness as they grow progressively more injured. Further rules deal with having ambushes be extremely deadly (though this seemed suspiciously similar to the bushwhacking rules in Green Ronin’s Advanced Gamemaster’s Guide), slightly bumping up the effectiveness of the Heal skill, tweaking magic healing for the revised lethal/nonlethal damage rule, making damage reduction slightly less effective (to compensate for the lack of magic weapons), and making resurrections more grim when they’re brought into play.

My one big problem with this section wasn’t with what it did, but rather with what it didn’t do; I was really hoping that it’d have mechanics for combat fatigue. As it stands now, Pathfinder characters in melee combat can effectively fight forever, without ever worrying about growing tired from constant battle. This makes it impossible for characters to ever be overcome by sheer numbers of lower-level enemies, and is a major weakness in Grittier games. Having no mechanics or suggestions for combat fatigue was a missed opportunity here.

Ultimately, Grittier is a book that, while it delivers on its promises, does so in a manner that is, well, gritty. The book does have some good advice, suggestions, and alternate rules for making a grim, low-magic Pathfinder campaign. Unfortunately, that often gets lost between the bad grammar, off-the-cuff references to mechanics from other products, and lack of context for many of the changes it recommends. Add in to that the simplistic layout, lack of artwork, and that much more could have been done in various sections (notice how there’s no advice on monsters, beyond a single change to damage reduction), and you have a book that’s far from perfect.

Still, if you can navigate these flaws, you’ll find a book with some genuinely good ideas for a Pathfinder campaign that won’t star magic-laden superheroes, but rather proficient-but-mortal characters that will find magic to be a mysterious force, and must face it with little more than their wits and mundane weapons. If you want a game where having less to work with evokes more fun from your players, take a look at making your campaign Grittier.

Like many of you in the summer of 1999, I eagerly sat through one of the most intense and gripping movies of our generation, roller coasting through the plot hoping that our future drunk-driving convicted and poster child for washed up kid star Haley Joel masters his powers to speak with angry spirits with obvious father issues. And even when we were about to walk away pleased with a refreshingly good movie, that was when we found it. It was something that had been missing for a while, maybe even since Hitchcock.

The Twist

And so our favorite cameo loving director and others have attempted to bring the twist back, not just in movies apparently but, apparently, even in RPG PDF, as Eridanus does with their first product, Ten Ideas wit ha Twist.

Ten Ideas is a short, plain 10 page PDF with each page dedicated to a single adventure hook with a twist. Unfortunately the twists are more of Signs than Unbreakable. That is not to say that they are as bad as the Village, but they just are not that twisty. I expected hooks that would involve the PCs being put in serious moral dilemmas after finding out the twist, however, most are just sub plots of the adventure. A twist should take you to a completely different place, not just provide you a minor detour.

The somewhat saving grace of the product, however, are the adventure hooks themselves. Sure the premise of the Twist fails as bad as Lady in the Lake, but the hooks are well written and show some innovation in places. The one page format is very impressive as well doing more for the adventure hook genre of PDFs than hooks you will see in other sources. Each page is broken up into a beginning that describes the setup and basic problem, the event which details what is going on, the twist which introduces a subplot and then the follow up, which is a nice little addition that lays out a course for future adventures outside of the hook.

For the Dungeon Master The one hook I enjoyed the most and that did seem somewhat twisty is the Bloody Circus. Whenever a circus is put in a Dungeons and Dragons community, there is usually some shenanigans, the one introduced here is a bit more surprising than others I have seen before. Hunger Strikes is also fairly surprising and has a slight spooky atmosphere to it.

The Iron Word Though its premise of the twist only shows feint Signs of life, the ideas in the adventure hooks are decent and make this a worthwhile purchase if you are in desperate need of hooks, just do not expect many surprises.

<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: - the adventure hooks are common in dungeons and dragon communities, however, there is enough innovation in some to make them usable.

• the layout of the adventure hooks is innovative for this type of PDF<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: - no real effort in the layout or even artwork for the product, I know its cheap but it doesn't have to appear cheap
• the twists just were not twisty, I only found two or three of the hooks really interesting. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>

Alien Profiles #2: Them, Qwar & Meridath by Eridanus Books is the second in the Alien Profiles series presenting new and exciting aliens races for D20 system gaming. It is a fifteen-page document (twelve and a half after cover, ad and OGL) with a clean layout including some wasted space and a black and white illustration for each of the three races.

All of the races are share that they are the product of advanced technology, they are:

Them, a purely robotic based joined in a ?hive mind? neural network called the Whole. While each part of the Them is an individual intelligence, as part of the Whole they have access to the entire distributed intelligence of the network. The Them are useful as classic conquering robot villain or they can be played with more nuance.

Qwar, the Qwar are intelligences split off from the AI that is the World-Library. The Qwar exist as sentient datastreams to gather information and act as agents of the World-Library in the universe at large.

Meridath, are living being, at least partially, an organic brain directs the advanced technology of their mechanical bodies which come in a variety of shapes. The Meridath Empire is both aggressive and paranoid, making them a dangerously expansionistic power and excellent enemies for a campaign.

Each ?race? is given full statistics for D20 play along with an example character. As their abilities are so outside the norm, it is difficult to say how accurate the level adjustments are for the races. A games masters should be careful in allowing these races as PCs and keep a careful eye on their power curve. However, as NPCs this should not cause any problem.

A good product with good takes on some traditional science fiction ideas. If you want to use some advanced alien races in your SF campaign, this would be a good place to start.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Ten Ideas with a Twist is the first product in new pdf series from Eridanus Books. Each product in this series brings together 10 new ideas or plots with an added twist. This first product contains ten pages of fantasy ideas, one per page, and each can be used to inspire further adventures or new avenues of excitement. The ideas are system independent, meaning that they can be used for any fantasy RPG, or even adjusted for other RPG games such as Modern or Future games.

The pdf has a very simple layout and design consisting of one page exploring each of the ten ideas. There is no art, no bookmarks, no background, no border - in fact, there's only pure text within this document. Other than the title, company logo, and the mantra 'We get the ideas and twist them till they scream' there are no frills with this pdf. While short pdfs in general do not necessarily require more attention on the presentation font, I felt this could've had a little more added to it. Writing and editing is not the best, mainly because it appears that the writer is not a native English speaker. One would expect at least the use of a spell-checker though. Disappointing on the presentation front.

This product is about ideas for adventures, plots or even locations. Ten such ideas are presented, each entry containing an initial premise, followed by an exposition of the premise, a twist, and further follow-up ideas or plot hooks. Most of the ideas are interesting to read, although in most instances not as 'twisty' as the mantra of the series entails them to be. In most cases the twists are just standard fare or expositions of the plot, really - an explanation as to the true nature of the event, rather than an unexpected twist per se. In that sense these are really just detailed plot hooks or adventure summaries. Only one idea, the Enemy Within, stood out as something interesting - the others were average, with some seen-before ideas accentuated with occasional originality.

That's not to say that this product isn't useful - I think ideas are always something that anybody can use, and one person's bad idea might be another person's good idea. The product has merit and utility, with some spark here and there. The ideas, if played through, will probably be fun and enjoyable. The presentation lets the product down a bit, as does some of the writing and spelling, but generally there's something useful in it even if the ideas don't scream out as much as they could.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Some decent ideas that spark the imagination, particularly the Enemy Within, and overall useful as a starting point for generating further ideas and intriguing possibilities.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Presentation could've used more work, and some of the ideas are rehashes of familiar concepts and could've used more 'twist' rather than just exposition of the initial plot hooks.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

The concept behind Ten Ideas with a Twist intrigued me. In my experience, a GM can never have too many adventure hooks. These are traditionally one or two sentences describing an adventure idea or event, intended to help the GM overcome writer's block. This product takes the idea of adventure hooks a step further, offering ten one-page adventure ideas, each with a surprise or deviation from the expected norm.

This is a 10 page PDF, with one page each devoted to a single adventure plot idea. There are no graphics or illustrations, making the PDF look rather plain. There aren't even any lines or headers to divide the text. A book like this doesn't need a whole lot of embellishment, but at the very least some lines, shading, and boxes could have been used to make the text a little more pleasing to the eye.

None of the adventure hooks in this product are bad, but few of them really stand out either. The biggest disappointment was the lack of anything that felt all that "twisted" to me. I was expecting to see some common fantasy plots that took unexpected turns. Instead, a got a handful of decent adventure hooks that pretty much go in directions you've seen before. That's not to say that these ideas couldn't be shaped into workable and even memorable adventures, it is just that the authors failed to deliver anything really different. Of the hooks, I liked Enemy Within and Possessive the best.

Ten Ideas uses a bit of a strange design. The hooks, at a page each, give more detail than typical adventure hooks. Important NPCs are often named and described in basic class / race terms. It would have been nice to see the designers go a step further. A few stat blocks for the villains, or the occasional new rule or monster would have helped make this product even more useful. While not strictly necessary, little touches like this would have gone a long way toward earning this PDF a higher rating.

The text of Ten Ideas with a Twist is riddled with typos and minor grammatical errors. The word item, for example, appears misspelled as "iten" no less than five times. In one place, the authors use the word "despered" which, from context, I can only guess is supposed to be "despaired." These aren't major errors, but they happen far too often to go unmentioned. At times, the grammatical mistakes do hurt the flow of the text, making for an awkward read.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: I like the concept: a series of one page adventure hooks, each with an unexpected twist. Some of the ideas could, with some work, be turned into decent adventures. The hooks are good for getting the GM's creative juices flowing, if nothing else. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: This really isn't a very professional product. The layout is plain and boring and there are several spelling and grammatical errors throughout. The ideas behind the hooks aren't really anything you haven't seen before. While they're more detailed than the kinds of adventure ideas you find in, say, the Dungeon Master's Guide, the extra information doesn't really add up to a lot of added value.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>

Pocket Adventures #1: The Temple of the Eternal Flames is a 18 page d20 pdf adventure from Eridanus Books, a new publishing company entering the d20 market. This is one of their first products, a simple and short adventure with a twist that can quickly and easily be used to fill a gap in a DMs preparation or even for a brief one-shot adventure. Adventures seem to be increasing in availability in the d20 scene these days, so it's good to see new companies try their hand at adventures as well. This adventure is suitable for characters of level 1-4.

This product comes as single pdf file. There are no bookmarks, although the table of contents allows you to navigate through the short pdf. Layout and presentation is good for a first product entry, and a few pieces of custom art are included, of which the full-color cover is the most spectacular. Organisation of the adventure is good, although in places still a little sketchy and the author could've added more details here and there to make the adventure location more dynamic. Stat blocks are included in the adventure body text, and most of the errors noticeable were very minor. There are quite a large number of editing and language errors in the pdf, though, some detracting but others less noticeable. Maps are generally good and clear, providing all the information required for their use, including legends. Overall, an acceptable effort on the presentation front for a first product.

The adventure itself takes place in an abandoned and ancient temple. The PCs travel there to stop the machinations of a bugbear and his hobgoblin raiders, but quickly learn that not all is as it seems. The product provides a number of adventure hooks to lure the adventurers to the site based adventure, and also includes a detailed synopsis and background details on the temple and the main antagonists. This allows the DM an upfront understanding on the nature of the adventure. Scaling details are also included for higher or lower level parties. As written the adventure is likely to be tough for 1st level PCs, but probably too easy for 4th level PCs. 2nd level is probably a good average party level to aim for.

The design and structure of the adventure is generally good. Some of the traps and locked doors have rather high DCs in the high 20s or even 30, which, while there is nothing wrong with it, puts it out of the range of low level PCs even when taking 20 to open a lock or search for a trap. Most chest are also locked but apparently have no keys either, despite the fact that they belong to some of the inhabitants of the temple. Minor problems with the adventure aside, it makes for a entertaining, though somewhat straightforward adventure, and does allow some opportunities for roleplaying while interacting in the adventure should the PCs choose to approach the adventure this way.

There are a total of 23 listed encounters within this temple complex, meaning that it shouldn't take too long to play through. The adventure is challenging from a combat perspective, though not necessarily so from a thinking perspective. Nevertheless, it's solid, and I look forward to seeing what Eridanus Books can come up with in the future for their Pocket Adventures series.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Temple of the Eternal Flame is a solid and enjoyable site-based adventure for low-level parties. Elements of the adventure are interesting and there is certainly something of a twist to the initial premise of the adventure. From this point of view the adventure succeeds at its aim.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some minor errors particularly in the use of language and editing, and a few minor errors in the design of the adventure. Here and there more information would've been useful to create a more dynamic adventure.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Pocket Adventure #1: Temple of the Eternal Flame is a short adventure from Brazilian publisher Eridanus Books. The zipped file is just over half-a-megabyte in size, and contains a single PDF of 626 kilobytes. The PDF is eighteen pages long, including a page for the cover, one for the credits/table of contents, two for maps, and one for the OGL. The PDF is not bookmarked.

The full-color cover notwithstanding, there?s only a scattering of black-and-white art throughout the adventure. The pages don?t have borders or backgrounds, and the maps are set on grayscale. As such, the lack of a printer-friendly version of this adventure is really a non-issue.

The adventure is a low-level one, and could very well serve as a group?s first outing to slay evil and collect loot. The premise is that a bugbear has been leading a group of hobgoblin raiders in the local area recently, and the PCs are called together (or volunteer) to destroy the marauders. However, what the PCs don?t know is that the humanoids? lair is right above a forgotten temple to a sealed deity, and said deity?s servant does not rest easily in his grave?

Altogether, Temple of the Eternal Flame works as a solid adventure, presenting itself as no more and no less than what it is. There are no new mechanics here, just a solid back-to-the-dungeon style adventure, where the PCs must battle through to the end to put the awakening evil back where it belongs. The only problem with the adventure, and this is a minor one, is that minor grammar errors crop up throughout. These are relatively isolated though, and generally not enough to tell that the writer?s first language wasn?t English. All in all, Temple of the Eternal Flame works well as a good low-level Fantasy d20 adventure.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: This product presented a simple, easy-to-run adventure for low-level characters.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Minor grammar errors cropped up throughout.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Alien Profiles #1: Niterian, Yahidar & Nabora is a Future d20 supplement from Brazilian publisher Eridanus Books. The zipped file is just under half-a-megabyte in size, and contains a single PDF weighing in at 655 kilobytes. The PDF is twelve pages long, including a page for the cover, a page for the credits/introduction, and a page for the OGL.

The PDF has neither a table of contents, nor bookmarks, but is short enough to make such things superfluous anyway. The front cover has a fair amount of color on it, but as a background, with the illustrations of the aliens themselves being in black-and-white. Interior pages have blue borders on alternating sides, and the section on each alien has the same image from the cover reproduced there. No printer-friendly version is included, but again, it?s something of a non-issue here.

As the title suggests, this supplement presents three new alien races for Future d20 games: the Niterians, Yahidar, and Nabora. Each alien race has their own distinctive racial flare, with marked idiosyncrasies that make them unique. The Niterians, for example, see virtually everything through the lens of bargaining. The Yahidar lack a sense of creativity almost completely. And the Nabora are devoted to order to the point of stifling change.

Each of the three new alien races is roughly categorized as follows. Each opens with a physical description, followed by either a discussion of their home world, or an organization among their people. Two of the entries then have sections on their psychology, with a few paragraphs then devoted to their society. After that, each has their PC game statistics given, followed by a generic NPC stat block. Each entry closes with a few paragraphs about how these aliens can fit in among the greater universe, as well as in adventuring parties.

Altogether, this book does a good job of presenting interesting new alien species. The new races presented here are mechanically solid, and the fluff (non-mechanical) information is sweeping enough to give a good idea of how these species think, while still leaving room for individual players to have their own interpretations on alien PCs. The only real problem here is the minor grammatical errors that crop up throughout the product. While never enough to inhibit comprehension, even a casual reading is enough to let the reader deduce that English is not the author?s first language. Still, it?s a minor problem, and GMs or players looking for an interesting new race should check out Alien Profiles #1.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The new alien races presented here were unique in how their society had given them pronounced quirks of behavior.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: This book needed to go through editing one more time to clean up the English grammar.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>