Great scenario. Die Hard on a spaceship if you want the cliff notes. Definely worth it. Highly recommended

Wonderful addition to the game. Definitely worth the price

This is well worth every penny you spend. Such a varied campaign with flavour and detail oozing out of it. The 5e version (individual files per each of the 12 chapters) if just as good.

I borrowed bits and pieces from this, and it's a pretty expansive packet so there was plenty to choose from. It's a fairly combat heavy story, with a kind of confusing history section (there's a lot of details), and wordy. On the one hand, I would have struggled to follow the story to the letter, and I think it would have gotten repetitive based on the sheer number of encounters with creatures. But I scaled it back, made in a 4 hour session for 2 players, and I liked the framework and details!

Introducted to the sytem via Dredd and worlds of 2000ad. Great for sandbox. Highly recommended

beautiful tokens amazing resource gonna save me so much time creating tokens.

Recently, I soloed my way through A.C.E. #2 Spirits of Manhattan (47 pages). It was designed for A.C.E., but I used IGOR – Adventures in Mad Science! (15 pages, free/pay what you want at DriveThruRPG). I used the Mythic Game Master Emulator as the solo engine. I created six Igors. They are clones and they all look the same. They do have different skill sets. The adventure is set in the U.S.A. 1984. The Master has given the Igors a mission: go out and capture a ghost which will be used as an energy source. They have a vehicle and ghost lasso devices which use anti-plasm.

THE FIRST CHALLENGE IS ROADWORK. IGOR DRIVER IS ABLE TO FIGURE OUT AN ALTERNATE ROUTE. NEXT, THEY ARRIVE AT ST. PETER’S CHAPEL AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. THE GHOST IS CAUGHT BY AN ANTI-PLASM DEVICE, BUT IT DOES GO CRASHING INTO A STAINED GLASS WINDOW. UNIVERSITY SECURITY ARRIVE ON THE SCENE FOLLOWED BY THE DEAN. IGOR SNEAK EXPLAINS THE SITUATION SUCCESSFULLY, BUT A REPORTER FROM THE UNIVERSITY PAPER TAKES THEIR PICTURE. ON THE WAY BACK TO THE LAB, THEY HAVE TO TAKE A DETOUR. IGOR DRIVER IS NOT ABLE TO AVOID THE FRUIT CART. WHEN THEY GET BACK TO THE LAB IN THE EVENING, THEY EXPERIMENT WITH MAKING A DUPLICATE OF THE GHOST THEY CAPTURED. THEY ARE SUCCESSFUL.

IN THE MORNING, THE MASTER SHOWS THEM THE LATEST EDITION OF THE UNIVERSITY PAPER. IT PORTRAYS THE IGORS AS ”BUMBLING IDIOTS”. THE MASTER’S NEW PLAN IS FOR THE IGORS TO GO TO THE LIBRARY AND KILL A TROUBLESOME DEMON. ON THEIR WAY, IGOR DRIVER IS ABLE TO AVOID THE FLATBED TRUCK FILLED WITH CHICKENS, BUT THE VEHICLE DOES GO CRASHING THROUGH A SHEET OF GLASS CARRIED BY TWO WORKERS. THE IGORS ARRIVE AT THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND ARE SOON BEING HARASSED BY THE DEMONIC HELLHOUND. IGOR THE DEVICE SPECIALIST IS ABLE TO WOUND IT WITH HIS ANTI-PLASM DEVICE. IGOR THE ANIMAL TRAINER SUCCESSFULLY TRAINS IT TO BE HIS NEW PET. THEY ALL SQUEEZE BACK INTO THEIR CAR. THE HELLHOUND STICKS HIS HEAD OUT OF THE WINDOW AND BARKS AT ALL OF THE CARS. THEY HAVE A SAFE DRIVE BACK TO THE LAB.

The next day, THE MASTER SHOWS THEM THE LATEST EDITION OF THE UNIVERSITY PAPER. IT PORTAYS THE IGORS AS HEROES. THE MASTER IS PLEASED! LATER, THE MASTER RECEIVES BILLS FOR THE BROKEN STAINED GLASS WINDOW, THE FRUIT CART, AND THE SHEET OF GLASS. THE MASTER IS NOT HAPPY! GIVE THIS adventure a try!

I am not yelling. This is a font problem.

Buy this instead of "The Monsters Know What They're Doing" and using the D&D MM! This quickly and concicesly provides several options that provide significant flavor text for clues to the monster that they are about to see (e.g. "You see large, chicken-like footprints in the mud") and how they find it (a large cockitrice it eating bugs). until MCDM's Flee Mortals! is released, this is the best DM monster reference!

A great book to add a different type of class that people can play

I can't recommend the Foundry version of Memories of Holdenshire. The maps are bad quality and still have the notation numbers on them, splat dab in the middle of rooms. My players ask "what's the big 1 in the middle of the floor?"

The adventure itself is cool, but the main reason to buy a momoduledule is for the maps etc. Instead I have to provide my own maps going forward because of those friggin huge notation marks, and the poor resolution.

Buy the PDF instead, and do the extra work to adapt it.

Maybe the best 3rd party book I own, and I own a lot! The monsters here are far more interesting and flavorful than their comparatively drab WOTC counterparts it also includes names fof monsters, suggested encounters, tactics and behavior, and (my favorite) roll tables for signs of the monster and behaviors they're engaging in when they encounter the PCs. Superior to the original MM. If you're like me and love to run interesting monsters, you won't regret picking this up!

An outstanding re-write of D&D 5e. Manages to incorporate many of the best features of Pathfinder 2e without bogging the game down in unnecessary crunch. Unlike many supplements which introduce power creep that makes balancing encounters increasingly difficult, this allows characters to be developed more laterally by allowing them a greater range of what are effectively mini-feats. And probably best of all, it's a great way to tell Hasbro and WotC to go pound sand while still getting to play a better-written version of their own handbook.

One quibble that I would homebrew modify: "Remove Curse" appears on the bard and druid spell lists, but not that of the cleric. It's got to be one of the most quintessentially cleric-y spells in existence, so that's my edit.

The marshal class is a nice addition for players who excel at teamwork, but they're even better when the party is in need of a martial DMNPC who won't hog the spotlight while optimizing the performance of the party.

The short of it:

My party agree, this is the answer to 5e's short falls. There are some quirks and if you want to mix with standard 5e rules, your DM is going to have to do the work to make it happen. But, it could be worth it for your party.

Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/09/100-days-of-halloween-elements-of-magic.html

Going back a bit when the D&D 3.5 edition of the game was all the rage and ENWorld began publishing material under the OGL and d20 STL. This one covers the mythic magic of our World.

Elements of Magic - Mythic Earth

PDF in a zip file. 58 pages. Front and back cover supplied as separate JPG files.

You can tell this is the early days of PDF publishing. The publisher provides a README file to explain how use the layers to make a print-friendly PDF. Vey nice I have to say. Very polite.

This book largely assumes that you will be using this in a modern d20 game where magic is real. There is an appendix in the back about using it with "Fantasy d20" coughD&D3.5cough.

Preface

A one-page overview of what this book is and how it is updated from it's predecessors (other Elements of Magic books).

Chapter One: Myths

This chapter is the foundation layer for playing a "mythic" game. This covers what sorts of myths you to use or create for your game. The default is a modern high fantasy. We get some very basic examples of how myths work in the world. Such as the abduction of Persephone causing the seasons to a basic overview of A Hero with a Thousand Faces monomyth.

Honestly, there could have been a lot more here.

Chapter Two: Spellcasting and Magical Traditions

This covers the spell-casting basics. This includes "regular" spell casting and ritual magic. Magic is largely a skill-based system. Because of this any class can cast spells but some are going to be better trained than others. There are new backgrounds, new skills, and of course lots of new feats. Feats are the primary vehicle to differentiate the various magical styles. It works much better than it would seem or even to anyone that is "feat exhausted."

In truth, the feat system is really rather perfect for this, or maybe, this book's conceptualization of these different mythic traditions is well suited for feats. In other games, these would be all different classes or sub-classes. Here it is entirely possible to build an arcane dabbler that knows a little runic magic, some voodoo. Your dabbler will never be an expert in anything due to the limited number of feats you can take, but that is also true in real life. They are also designed to provide some interesting playability if you do take more than one Tradition feat.

Examples of some magic items and a ritual spell are also given.

Chapter Three: The Magic of High Fantasy

This is our campaign world; magical modern Earth. They make a distinction between our Earth, "Terra" and the magical Earth, "Gaia." It is not a particularly new idea, but it is well executed here and that is the important part. Detailed within are various organizations that exist on Gaia that are related to magic. There is the governmental "Bureau" that act as the law enforcement in the magical world and "The Knights of the Round" that enforce the treaties with the Fey. There is room for many more.

We are also given The Mage, an Advanced Class for d20 Modern. This rounded off with some NPC Mages.

Chapter Four: Spells

Spells here are applications of magical skills. The ten skills are Attack, Charm, Create, Cure, Defend, Divine, Illusion, Move, Summon, Summon, and Transform. Each skill must be trained. So it is easy to see you can have generalists in all skills and experts in just a few. Each skill has a number of spells associated with it. You can design spells as needed with whatever enhancements seem to work the best. Each enhancement requires a skill rank. So four enhancements mean four additional skill ranks.

The system takes a little bit to learn but is easily adaptable and usable in play.

Appendix

This covers converting the Mage advanced class to a Base class for use in Fantasy d20 worlds.

It is obvious to me that this was someone's favorite campaign model for a while. There are a lot of really great ideas here and few I'd like to try out. Reading it now I am taken by how much of this could be ported over to True20 or even a modern OSR game.

This product absolutely fell short of the mark. It's not as compatable with 5E as they lead you to believe. It's not Advanced 5E. It's an unnecessary RPG that takes a lot of cues from D&D.

If you're looking for something different there are many excellent options out there. Steer clear of this one.