The Vile Worm introduces a cool background and an interesting villain, then throws them out of the window right at the beginning of the adventure in favor of a short and linear sidetrek that lacks challenge and originality.

See my full review here.

The Wizardarium of Calabraxis offers a good amount of colorful and imaginative content for a ridiculously low price.

While the handouts and the map are amazing the content is mediocre at best with lazy writing. There is nothing original, interesting, evocative about the adventure. It needs more work from the Judge to become memorable.

The book contains 13 new patrons for the DCC RPG with invocations, taints, spells, even minions in some cases. Since the original game had only five of them fully fleshed out, that's quite a huge addition. They new patrons are very diverse, you can find an angel, an egyptian god, an animal a lord and even a sorcerer's hand. The art and the writing style remind me the DCC RPG core book, which is always a good thing.

Overall I'm very satisfied with Dragons Hoard's first book. Once it's available PoD, I'm going to buy it and put it next to my DCC core book. It's a must have supplement for all DCC fans, especially those who play wizards.

The DCC RPG is the most plaesant surprise of the year. It's a game that not only captures the feeling of old-school gaming and appendix N literature, but does it with the use of innovative and fun game mechanics and with the help of writing that's going to have an impact on how you play and run your games.

The size of the book might be intimidating, but it's a bit deceiving: it's full of cool illustrations made by the best old-school artists of the past and the present, the font is quite big and there are plenty of whitespace. I found it quite easy to read, it didn't strain my eyes like some other, flashy products. Joseph Goodman has a very strong opinion and goal, and the writing mirrors his enthusiasm very clearly. I enjoyed it very much, especially since he gives a lot of good advice for players and judges too. I think this is one of the defining aspects of DCC RPG: instead of more and complex rules, you get inspiring advice and content to customize the game. Goodman Games deserves a praise for the bookmarks too, which make navigation in the pdf very easy. Too bad there's no index, which makes it harder in the hardcover version...

The rules are based on a the d20 system, but leaves the crunchy character optimizing game elements and pain in the ass rules out. Your character is an amalgam of a profession, six attributes (strength, stamina, agility, intelligence, personality, luck), a birth augur, and of course a character class. By default the game advises the players to start with a handful of level 0 commoners, who will become level 1 adventurers after their first adventure, but you also get the rules to start at higher levels. The attributes go from 3 to 18, their bonuses going from -3 to +3. Luck is and odd one, because it can change a lot: you can burn your luck to survive dangerous situations, and you can gain more if you find a way to please fate and the gods.

The seven classes might be well known from earlier editions of D&D, but they are very different from their origins and even each other when it comes to gameplay and mechanics. Warriors are brutal in combat and have the Mighty Deed of Arms, which is probably the coolest and most flexible subsystem for martial maneuvers I've ever seen. Thieves are good at thief skills and their luck reacharges with rest. Clerics can use the power of their gods to turn unholy (what's unholy depends on religion), lay hands, ask for divine aid and summon spells, but they must be careful, for the overuse of their powers or bad luck might anger the god, and pleasing the gods requires sacrifice. The wizard cast spells in a semi-vancian way, can serve and invoke various patrons for more power, but at a cost. Dwarves are underground fighters who can smell out treasures, detect strange constructions and are adept at using their shields. Elves are a mix of warriors and wizards, who can find patrons easier, are immune to sleep and paralysis, have infravision, but the touch of iron burns their skin. Halflings are good stealthy, ambidextrous and bring luck to the party.

The core system is very light. The whole skill chapter is only two pages long and the rules for combat aren't complex either. It's the extra stuff, that makes thing more complicated, and in my opinion, interesting and cool. You get critical and fumble charts for combat, Mighty Deed of Arms for warrior maneuvers, and a seperate sub system for spell duels. The latter is perhaps the only part of the game that's more complex than needed, and might slow down gameplay. DCC RPG also uses the Zocchi dice, and in a good way: instead of adding or subtracting modifiers, some situations change what kind of dice you roll, eg. when fighting with two weapons, you might roll a d20 for your right handed, and a d14 for your left handed attack.

The largest chapter of the book is of course magic. Every spell has various power levels. How powerful you cast a spell depends on your roll, caster level and spell casting attribute modifier. Most spells aren't really single spells, but contain multiple variations. Wizards must be careful, for fumbles and low rolls can result in corruption, misfire and the loss of the spell until the next rest. Clerics are safe, but the overuse and failures will give them penalties for their following spells. I also love the mercurial magic chart: every wizard gets a side effect for each spel he learns. There are good, bad and even neutral side effects, and these make it sure that two wizards won't cast the same spell the same way.

The rest of the book contains supplementing rules, guidelines for running the game, craeting magic items, a bestiary with lots of charts to craete unique humanoids, demons, giants, dragons, undead. There are some appendices at the end of the book for curses, poisons, house ruling, names, titles, etc. Not much to write about these, I already praised them in the second paragraph enough. We also get two modules, one for zero level characters (this one is quite good) and one for fith level (this one is an interesting, but way too short deathtrap). After that, all you get is more art and ads about third party publishers.

Overall I'm very satisfied with the product. It's good to see in the big old-school mania a game, that not only captures the feel of old-school fantasy literature, but improves it, and does it with modern mechanics, without cloning an older edition of D&D. It's also a very good and useful supplement for Judges, Dungeon Masters, Referees of other games, since it's full of great guidelines, advice and mechanics, that you can use elsewhere.

LotFP is a unique gem among the retroclones. Many of them are trying to emulate one of the older editions of the world's first fantasy roleplaying game. LotFP is different: it only uses them as a starting point, then goes in refreshing new and interesting directions, where others don't dare to. LotFP embraces the elements of horror and weird fiction. The book is full of unsettling images, both in art and text. If D&D is metal, than this beast is some kind of totally wicked death or black metal. Someone said once, that Warhammer FRP is the game, where the players think they are playing D&D, while the DM thinks they are playing Call of Cthulhu. Bullshit. This is that game. While LotFP is old-school in spirit, many of the mechanics are modernized, some of them being downright innovative. If you won't ever play the game as written, you might still find many useful elements of the system that you could steal - like the encumberance rules, the skill system and so on. While I don't think I'm ever going to run a longterm campaign with this game, it's still a quality product, a great game and a huge eye opener. Those, who are getting bored of the repetative nature of the OSR, will find this refreshing - if they aren't disguisted by it's style. LotFP dares to be different, which is it's greatest strength and enemy too.

Swords & Wizardry is OD&D made easy and accessible. It has everything you need to play in one book, from character creation to high level playing, from referre tips and guides to monsters and treasures. Also, it's easy to read, one afternoon is enough to read a book and get your first adventure ready. Character creation takes minutes, just like combat. There are also optional rules, which make it easier for younger audiences to get into the game. There are of course some errors, but only minor, and the Referee is free to do with them what he likes. Still, I would be grateful, if there was a non-free version of the book in pdf format, which includes the Thief and Monk classes from the print edition - although it's not hard to create your own version of these classes, and there are some gamers, who already did it...

This book contains everything a player would need for his adventures on the Wilderlands: new (including amazons, altanian barbarians, avalonians, different human cultures, etc.), three new classes (the alchemist, the amazon warrior and the witch), new skills, feats, rules, spells, and of course, description of the Wilderlands, the City State of the Invincible Overlord, and the gods. Interestingly for player's guide, even monsters are included. The races, classes aren't well balanced, but this is part of the old-school feel of the product. While I recommend this for everyone, who plays a Wilderlands campaign with D&D3.5 rules, I simply can't ignore the low quality of the pdf. No bookmarks, no index, no table of contents, and the maps seem to be poorly scanned, with low resolution. Alas, since it's out of print, this is the only choice we have...

I simply love this map. It lacks minor details, but fulfills it's role as a companion to the World of Wilderlands guidebook. Recommended for every Wilderlands fan. Would be nice on the wall in my room.

Nothing more, than a quick summary about the the World of the Wilderlands, including the cosmology, the planetary bodies, the continent of Rhadamanthia, and of course, the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. With it's 24 pages, it's a really good introduction to the campaign setting, especially for new players. While the Wilderlands of High Adventure line is for Castles & Crusades, this book is system neutral, so you can use it for OD&D and D&D3.5 alike. Buying the Rhadamanthia continent map is also recommended for this product.