Character Builder Complete: Celtic is a collection of character record sheets intended to serve as a multi-page character sheet for your D&D (or d20) PC. The word Celtic in the title refers to the graphical style of each page, all of which feature Celtic knot-work borders and other graphics.

There are a fair number of sheets here, ranging from a character description sheet, to spell sheets, to sheets for tracking multiple attack options. Every sheet is nice to look at. The designers chose a font that is stylized without being difficult to read, and the aforementioned borders give the sheets a nice, professional look. Some of the pages contain added graphics, such as the wizard spell sheet, which features an illustration of a spellbook and twin magical staves. These illustrations are well placed, filling what would normally be dead space, and they really add to the sheet?s appearance. Other graphics, such as those found on the cleric spell sheet, are less subtle and tend to distract from the actual information.

The best use of art was found on the equipment page, where different sections featured small graphical representations of what they might contain. One region has a small potion and scroll, which I imagine is where I?d list my character?s potions and scrolls. This is the sort of design that can really increase the ease and speed with which I find things on my character sheet, and thus can really make a product like this stand out from the crowd. I also appreciated the return of the shield-shaped box for listing Armor Class. Maybe it?s all those years of second edition, but I miss that shield! It seems to make finding my character?s AC noticeably faster.

Looking in more detail at the sheets themselves, I found things that I liked and some things that didn?t really work for me. The format for listing classes is one of the better designs I?ve seen in a D&D character sheet. With open multiclassing and prestige classes, it?s not uncommon for characters to have two or three classes. This format is easy to read and easy to work with. Other sections of the description sheet are less useful. The areas for general appearance, personality, mannerisms, etc. were too short to allow any kind of detailed information. Other things, such as date created and bloodline seemed like filler.

Some pages amounted to nothing more than blank lines with titles. Why not include things like racial traits already, with a different sheet for each standard race plus a blank sheet for customized or house-ruled races? Rather than a bunch of blank lines for listing feats, why not a more structured listing for the feat?s name, page number, and perhaps a quick summary? I know I could write all that in the space provided, but I could do the same with a blank sheet of paper. The paper wouldn?t look as good, granted, but it seems like the designers could have given us a little more.

I rather liked the page called ?Tracker.? This is a sheet designed to track the various adjustments a character experiences over level advancement. Things like hit points gained at each level, saving throw progressions, and feat selects all have their place here. I can see this sheet as a tool for planning the long-term development of a character. It would also be nice for the rare instances when it?s important to know exactly what you rolled for hit points at level X. Maybe not the most common thing at the gaming table, but interesting nonetheless.

The spell sheets for the various magic-using classes were some of my favorites. While the information is pretty standard (spells per day, spells known, etc.), the format and graphical additions make for a very nice-looking sheet. I also liked the Spells/Powers sheets, which provide a simple means of recording the basic info of frequently cast spells.

Character sheets, I think, are like art: they?re very subjective. I probably want different things out of a character sheet than you do. Character Builder Complete does a pretty good job of trying to cater to everyone?s tastes with a wide variety of useful sheets. I liked something about pretty much every sheet here, and at least a few will probably get printed out and used as-is in my D20 campaigns.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The strongest part of this product is the visual design. The sheets are very professional-looking, and the small amount of art generally adds to both the ascetics and the usability. The character building sheets presented here are worlds above the standard ?official? sheet, and would definitely work as a means to track and organize a D&D character in most campaigns.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: With the PDF format as its base, I can?t help but wonder why the designers didn?t better utilize acrobat?s capabilities. There are no bookmarks to help you quickly find the sheet you?re looking for. Worse, why not include editable forms that the user can type to and print out? With such professional-looking sheets, it seems almost a shame to mess them with hand-written character stats.

Finally, while I rather like a lot of these sheets, I can?t help but compare them to a host of very similar downloads available for free all over the web. If Character Builder Complete offered a few more features or a wider variety of sheets (perhaps customized to d20 classes) then they would have likely earned a higher score.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

This is a collection of black and white (more accurately, black, white, and red) illustrations meant to be used as character portraits or interior art in profit or non-profit RPGs (and, I suppose, other kinds of products). This book is the second in a series.

The product blurb describes these illustrations as ?intriguing and provocative,? which is a fairly apt description of the art contained in this book. There are twelve illustrations in all, and each depicts a goth-looking female in a provocative pose and some state of undress. Some of the girls appear to be vampires, one looks like some kind of demoness, and all have a decidedly modern / gothic look to them.

It?s difficult to judge an art product on a simple star scale. Unlike traditional RPG books and supplements, there aren?t a lot of factors to weigh. There?s no writing, no game mechanics; there?s just art. Art, being a subjective thing, is hard to judge. Will you like the art in the gallery? Yes, you?ll probably like some of it. Will you find any use for it? That depends on what you?re looking for.

The pictures in Stock Art Portfolio 2 are all very similar. For some reason, the majority of the girls have some kind of lip piercing. The piercings certainly fit with the gothic look of the art, but they make the already similar pictures even more alike. I actually had to look back at each picture a few times, just to make sure they weren?t meant to depict the same person in different poses.

There?s nothing wrong with similarity per se. If you like the look and style of this art, and you?ve got some kind of campaign with a lot of sexy female vampires, you?re definitely getting your money?s worth out of this collection. If none of what I just said applies to you, then you might still enjoy the art, but you won?t get a lot of use out of this product.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The art is pretty good, and would work well as character portraits in any kind of modern gothic campaign with a fair amount of female vampires. The poses are interesting, and some of the background art (I liked the pictures with the night sky background) adds to the overall effect.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: This product really lacks variety. I?m thinking scantily clad female vampires are probably only useful to a small percentage of gamers and game designers. Many of the women look very much alike, and their outfits and similar facial piercings add to this effect. I?m afraid that this book is likely very hit or miss; You?ll either find a use for the majority of the art, or for only 1 picture.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

Secret Societies by Silven Publishing is a book about using secret societies in your roleplaying games. It?s written for d20 games, but its light enough on game mechanics that it would probably serve as a valuable resource for non-d20 gamemasters as well.

Secret Societies is a pretty good-looking PDF, especially for a small publisher. The art is decent throughout and the layout is fairly user-friendly. I noticed a few editing errors here and there, but nothing bad enough to ruin my reading experience.

The book opens with an overview of secret societies in the real world. It talks about common origins, reasons for joining, and elements common to most secret orders. There is a lot of advice here on creating and implementing secret orders into your campaign. The author talks about the power and influence of the societies, how to get player characters involved, and other considerations. A lot of this advice is fairly intuitive, and I wish the author had gone into a little more depth. There?s nothing bad here, and it certainly got me thinking, but it also didn?t offer a lot of ideas that I couldn?t have dreamed up on my own.

Next, the book presents six secret societies, taken from the pages of real world history. This section is the meat of this book, and it?s really very good. I?m no conspiracy buff, but I have done a little research into a few of the organizations detailed here, and I have to say I was impressed with the level of detail. Each society is given a brief overview, a detailed origin and history, a list of goals and beliefs, symbols, and a number of adventure hooks. There are also a few new feats and prestige classes appropriate to members of the societies. The primary focus here seems to be D&D, but notes and stats are given for d20 modern and more futuristic settings as well. Some societies work better for modern settings, and others are better fit for D&D, but the book does a pretty good job suggesting ways to adapt them to either.

While volumes of books could be (and have been) written about groups such as the Knights Templar or the Masons, Secret Societies manages to condense each group?s description down to about a dozen pages each. While I criticized the book for being too broad in the first chapter, here the level of depth is just about perfect. Without getting bogged down in detail, each society has been given enough background to insert them fairly easily into a campaign. Too little info would have hindered this book?s usefulness, while too much would have been overkill. Fortunately, Secret Societies seems to have found a nice balance. The six secret societies detailed in this section are: The Assassins, Aum Shinrikyo, The Freemasons, The Knights Templar, Mossad, and The Thule Society.

I was glad to see that Secret Societies doesn?t present a lot of game mechanics governing the various secret orders. There are feats that are only available to members of a given society, and prestige classes representing elite members of the orders, but that?s it. The feats seem pretty good overall, and might offer a nice additional incentive to joining a society.

I was less impressed with the prestige classes. While some would argue that D&D has seen an overabundance of prestige classes, they fill a very logical niche in this book. From a flavor standpoint, they?re very well designed. I?m a bit suspect of their game mechanics, however. Its not that any one class stands out as obviously broken, it?s just that the classes don?t seem very elegantly designed. Some of the abilities are confusing (for example, what is the point of the Nizari assassin?s Badge of Innocence ability), while others seem like some they could have used some refinement (the Templar Elite?s Unyielding ability is basically a reworded Diehard feat). The prestige classes just need some polishing to make the rules mesh with the background flavor.

In addition to the six detailed groups, Secret Societies contains brief descriptions of 31 other organizations, ranging from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn to the Yakuza. These descriptions, while brief, have enough information to get you started fleshing these societies in more detail. They?re also a lot of fun to read. The book closes with guidelines for designing your own secret societies and rules for generating them at random.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: The six secret societies are very well researched and given just enough detail to be useful in my D&D or d20 modern campaign. The other societies have enough info for an interested GM to flesh them out. The advice on creating and utilizing secret societies is pretty sound, if occasionally a little too broad.

I was highly entertained reading through this PDF, and actually inspired to use bits and pieces of it in my own games. That?s a winner in my book.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some of the mechanics seemed a bit shaky. The prestige classes stood out as a bit?inelegant to me.

The book is primarily written for D&D gamers and some societies seem kind of shoehorned into a fantasy niche. There are rules and advice for using each of them in d20 Modern, but D&D always takes precedence. I?m assuming the authors were trying not to split their audience and decided to focus on D&D over the less popular Modern , but I?m not sure if the end result is quite as useful. That said, there are plenty of suggestions to help you adapt, disguise, and redesign the societies, whatever your game of choice.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>

In a nutshell, Into the Open is a book about adventuring through the plains. It doesn?t contain any game rules (and doesn?t seem to be written for any specific system at all). What it does contain are a lot of well-written terrain descriptions, encounter ideas, and tips for improving the realism of plains in your game setting.

The book starts off with short descriptions, which the author calls ?bits.? Each bit is fairly brief but full of flavor. The way they?re written, they could easily be rolled at random whenever the PCs wander in a direction that the gamemaster didn?t expect. There are enough out of the ordinary descriptions here that a random roll could easily turn an unexpected divergence from the main plot into a plot or subplot of its own. When I read through the various ?bits,? I was almost always left wanting to find out more. The book doesn?t tell you, of course, which leaves the GM creative freedom to continue in whatever direction works best for his campaign.

After the ?bits? come the ?shards? which, as the name implies, are larger and slightly more detailed descriptions. Shards tend to describe larger regions, and aren?t meant for random generation. Instead, each shard could be used as a building block for creating an adventure in or around a plains region. Like the bits, the descriptions in this section are also great inspiration.

Speaking of inspiration, I can?t tell you how many cool ideas sprang to mind just reading through the descriptions. What?s up with the green bees? Who or what killed all these humanoids and left them here to rot? I guarantee at least some of these descriptions will find their way into my D&D game as fleshed out plots. An ambitious GM could take this book and, with a nice sheet of hex-paper, easily create an interesting plains region ready for a campaign?s worth of encounters and adventures.

After the encounters (and there are close to 200 of them), the remainer of Into the Open is devoted to advice on the actually structure and ecology of plains and plains-like environments in the real world. This section doesn?t get too bogged down with scientific detail. It gives you just enough information on the what, why, and how of plains to give them an air of realism (and thus increase verisimilitude) in your games.

Into the Open concludes with a handy index and a section with the various encounters formatted so that they can be printed on cardstock for ease of use. The download includes a print-friendly version and a color version of the ecology section.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: I love this book. The descriptions are creative, yet generic enough to fit in nearly any fantasy campaign. Into the Open is good both as inspiration for the homebrewing gamemaster and as a source of clever random ideas for the group that takes an unexpected direction during a planned adventure.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Negatives are hard to find. The cover art leaves something to be desired, and some of the interior art (what little there is) doesn?t inspire. There are some photographs in the ecology section, which lose quite a bit in black and white. There is a color version of this article included in the download, however, which makes up for things. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>

Slaves of the Moon is a guide to introducing lycanthropes as a playable PC race in D&D and d20 fantasy settings. It was written by d20 freelancer extraordinaire, and recent Wizards of the Coast hire, Mike Mearls.

The book begins with a brief history on the role of lycanthropes and other shapechangers in real world mythology. This section is short, but it?s well written and informative. I learned, for example, that weresharks have their roots in Polynesian mythology. The introduction is there primarily to set the tone for the book, and it does a good job getting the reader into the proper mindset for a book about lycanthropes.

The first chapter delves into a lot of non-mechanical background details on various lycanthropes. We learn of the creation, culture, religion, and psychology of werebears, wereboars, wererats, weretigers, and werewolves. The hedonistic wererats have a great love for the finer things, but their inner nature makes them incapable of creating anything themselves. The weretigers are insatiably curious and can never be satisfied in their quest for new discoveries and explorations. There is a lot of detail here and a number of good ideas. This chapter would be useful both to a player running a lycanthrope PC and to a GM looking to add some depth of character to his monsters.

The next chapter contains the rules and mechanics for introducing lycanthropes as playable PCs. The book gives some ideas for how a character can become a lycanthrope, as well as suggestions and advice on each option. It should be noted that the races presented here don?t work exactly like the standard Player?s Handbook races. Depending on how your character became a lycanthrope, basic features of his or her base race may be altered. From there, you must take levels in special lycanthrope character classes. These classes spread the lycanthrope benefits out over several levels, and represent your character?s mastery over his or her affliction.

In game design terms this allows characters of any level to become lycanthropes, and it?s more elegant (if slightly less realistic) than the template and ECL rules presented in the core books. I?ve not playtested these classes, but they seem to be on par with similar monster classes found in books like Savage Species.

Chapter two continues with a handful of prestige classes and feats. The prestige classes are fairly well designed, and a few of them stood out as interesting choices. The Herald of Decay, a wererat servant of a plague god is an interesting (if obvious) idea. The Knight of Glade and Glen is a logical expansion on the werebear culture presented in chapter one. If I have a complaint about the prestige classes, it?s this: Slaves of the Moon requires lycanthrope characters to tweak their existing race and then take levels in the special lycanthrope character classes. It seems to me that taking levels in a prestige class on top of all this might go a little too far away from standard d20 character design for some people?s taste. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Most of the feats are fairly standard ideas: feats that let you shift to your animal form without ruining your armor, feats that let you fight better in one form over another, etc. There were a few clever additions that stood out. I liked Blade Grasper, which lets a lycanthrope use his damage reduction to heal himself around a weapon that has struck him and then wrench the blade from his opponent?s grasp.

Next, chapter two presents a number of lycanthrope-themed spells and magic items. Some of the new spells and items are meant to be used by lycanthrope characters, while others are designed to be used against them. There are some good ideas here, and many of them would be very desirable choices for lycanthrope characters. This section also talks about standard magic item slots (hats, armor, etc.) and how they function differently when adapted for use by characters in animal form.

Abruptly, chapter two concludes with about 13 pages of notes on the role of lycanthropes in a typical campaign. There?s good advice and ideas here, including information on the relations between lycanthropes and the standard Player?s Handbook races, new lycanthrope variants, and campaign advice for using Slaves of the Moon in your game. This is all very well written, but I can?t help but point out that I didn?t even notice these last few pages on my initial read-through. Why is this tacked on to the very end of the book, in a chapter dominated by rules and game mechanics? Honestly, this entire section would probably be better placed in a chapter all its own, where a reader can easily find it and reference in the future. All in all, this is a pretty small complaint. I can live with a tiny layout gaff in an otherwise stellar product.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: This is a very professional and well-written book that offers a nice variant to the lycanthrope templates presented in the Monster Manual. If you?re interested in playing (or allowing) lycanthrope characters, or want to give some depth to werecreatures in your games, Slaves of the Moon is a must buy. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: While the rules in Slaves of the Moon are well designed, they can?t really be dropped seamlessly into your campaign without at least some thought to the repercussions of altering the mechanics governing lycanthropes of all kinds. The author has given you some advice to help you along, but its important to note that this book in most cases replaces the standard rules for lycanthrope monsters and characters. Buy this book with the understanding that some minor tweaking may be necessary. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The humorously titled Artifacts I: Ducks of Ultimate Doom is a book of artifacts from The Le Games. The book takes its name from one of the artifacts it details: a set of magical wooden ducks. Each artifact is given game statistics and a brief history. There are 21 magic items in total.

The very first things that grabbed my attention, unfortunately, were the typos. The errors aren?t the worst I?ve seen, but they?re obvious enough that I?m not sure how the author missed them. It seems like every other page or so contains a few small typos or grammatical errors. They?re minor, but they add up.

The ideas in Ducks of Doom are clever. Their presentation, however, is not up to industry standards. Reading this product, I get a real sense of the author?s enthusiasm. He has some cool ideas, he?s just not the most skilled at presenting them in a manner consistent with d20 conventions. The item descriptions are unnecessarily confusing and wordy, and could have been clarified by simply emulating the magic item write-ups in the DMG.

For example, I scratched my head when I first read that the Aegis armor ?contains 2 charges, which are regenerated daily. The wearer may use these charge[sic] to enchant the armor (or himself) with one magical property for up to one hour.? Wouldn?t it have been easier to say ?twice per day, the wearer can activate one of the following abilities?? The wording problems are worse, I think, because they take away from otherwise interesting and creative magical items.

Other design issues are more subtle. For some reason, many of the artifacts scale in power based on the level of the character wielding them. While there?s no problem with this mechanically (you might even think it?s a good idea), it makes these items different than artifacts as otherwise defined in a conventional d20 campaign. The book explains this design decision?to a degree. The author contends that different D&D campaigns have different perceptions on what constitutes a powerful magic item, thus artifacts should scale accordingly. While that?s technically true, the default rules are built around an assumed magic item progression. In other words, unless you?re playing a very heavily house-ruled campaign, a +2 magic sword will never rightly be considered a very powerful magical weapon (as the book suggests). If the author understands the underlying magic item progression of the default rules, why design artifacts this way?

Other than the mechanics, each item is given a bit of history. Unfortunately, the detailed histories are so full of references to kingdoms and power groups that they?re useless. I could rewrite them so that they mesh with my campaign world of choice, but that would defeat the purpose of having them in this book. What would have been better, I think, would have been to include histories that pulled from thematic elements common to generic D&D.

I hate to be so hard on The Le. I rather like many of the magic items in this book, and the product is very inexpensive. If The Le could take some extra time to clean up their grammar and mechanics, I think they could put out some really great PDFs.

<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: If you?re looking for some neat items that you could use in your campaign with just a little work, this book is worth the price.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I hesitated to give this one 2 stars, since I do like many of the items?but the poor game mechanic descriptions and writing issues were too much to call this book a 3. Sadly, its below the bar of expectations. The artifacts in Ducks of Doom could be used without too much trouble in most D&D campaigns, but the presentation just doesn?t meet d20 standards. The rules are poorly described and the item histories aren't very useful as written.

Call my final rating 2.5 stars.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>

The Le Games? 17 magic rings actually presents 18 magic rings. I?ve read other The Le products that contain more than the 17 what-evers listed in the title, so I?m beginning to wonder if it isn?t some kind of inside joke. Each magic ring includes a physical description and appropriate game mechanics. This product also includes a small section with adventure ideas, treasure tables including the new magic rings, and an appendix of some of the open gaming content used in the product. Most of this additional material feels kind of tacked-on, and there really isn?t anything inspiring or must have here.

The meat of this product is the list of magic rings. There is a pretty good range of rings presented here, and the designers tried to give each one a unique flavor. Sometimes the flavor worked for me, and sometimes it didn?t. I really liked the Spectral Ring, which gloves your hand in a permanent shadow that you can then send out to deliver touch spells. The Ring of Warning is another ring that I liked. This ring subtly glows when in the presence of certain types of danger. It?s up to the player to determine, through trial and error, what kind of danger each color indicates. In the hands of the right player, discovering the ring?s various effects could be a fun side quest over the course of multiple adventures.

Where ideas didn?t work for me, the issues were largely ones of personal taste. The Wedding Bands come immediately to mind. These twin rings are meant to be worn by a married couple. They give the wearers the ability to monitor one another?s well being, provide protection to each other, and allow limited teleportation. All fine and well mechanically, but the idea of them as wedding rings somehow bugs me. I don?t see PCs getting married to one another too often, and I don?t really my NPCs shelling out 164,000gp on a pair of magic wedding rings. Add to this the Familial Bands, which are basically the exact same magic item (with slight differences), and I?m left feeling doubly flat.

17 Magic Rings unfortunately contains a few grammatical and mild mechanical problems. While none of the grammar errors are terrible, they are really easy to spot in a product this short. A thorough editing job and a few rewrites would improve the book?s overall clarity.

The mechanical errors are a little more problematic. Take, for example, the Ring of Pacifism. The item description says that, while wearing this ring, a character is under the protection of a permanent Sanctuary spell. The description of Sanctuary in the Player?s Handbook notes that the spell is cancelled if the recipient makes an attack. So, what happens when a character wearing a Ring of Pacifism does the same? Is the spell effect cancelled for that encounter? Is it negated vs the target attacked? Something else?

There are a few rings that I probably wouldn?t allow in my campaign, and a few that I would allow only with some rules modifications. I?m also confused as to why the ring of Concentration requires Craft Universal Item rather than Forge Ring. Is that a typo, or an intentional design decision? If it?s the latter, the product should have said so.

An experienced DM can probably adjudicate this situation without too much effort, but he or she wouldn?t have to if the Ring of Pacifism description was better written. The Le Games seems to be writing to gamers with the experience to ?read between the lines? and extrapolate what they meant from what they said. While their assumption is probably correct, unclear rules don?t fly in a modern d20 fantasy product.

Fortunately, the writing problems are, at their worst, a minor hindrance. There are enough clever ideas in this product to make it worth the price of admission. My players can expect to stumble upon at least a couple of these rings sometime in my latest homebrew campaign.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: A nice variety of magical rings, at least a few of which are good enough to steal for your own campaign. If you?re looking for a magic ring or two, you?re likely to find something you can use in this product.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I have to take away points from my final score for a few grammatical errors and places where the rules weren?t as clear as they should have been. I?m also not as fond of some of the more mundane or less creative rings. If I could easily think it up on my own, I probably already have stats for it in my campaign.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

0one?s Blueprints of the Great City is an RPG product that uses the strengths of the PDF format to their fullest advantage. While I love both print and PDF books, there are certain types of gaming products that lend themselves particularly well to the PDF format, and the detailed city map presented in this book is a stellar example of why that?s true.

First of all, the maps look great. The forward refers to them as old-fashioned maps, and they are very reminiscent of the style of maps one might have seen in a 1st addition AD&D adventure (right down to the blue-line color of the maps). These maps emphasize function over form. What they lose in superfluous art, they more than make up in detail and usability.

0one has done a good job of using the PDF format to enhance this product?s usability. The map location numbers can be turned on and off with a simple click of the mouse. The vector-based design allows for clear printing. I also appreciated that I could zoom in on a particular map section without losing any detail.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Overall, this PDF is a fantastic value for anyone looking for a realistic, detailed map of a large medieval city to interject into his or her game. The map is well designed, easy to read, easy to use, and customizable.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The map seems to lack any indication of scale. Also, there seems to be a slight formatting issue with the included key.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The Dungeon Dive series presents a neat concept: an easily scalable, bare-bones adventure built around a theme. Dungeon Dive 4 details the lair of a necromancer, a fantasy gaming staple. This product comes complete with maps, stats, and room descriptions. All you have to add is a necromancer and a plot hook and?PRESTO! Instant dungeon! Ok, maybe not presto, but you get the idea.

Dungeon Dive 4 is designed for a party of 4th to 16th level. Included are maps for each area of the ruined temple (now occupied by the necromancer and his undead minions) and details of the various encounters therein. The encounters themselves are broken down based upon whether you?re running a party at the low, middle, or high end of the target CR. Monsters are divided into three groups of one or more creatures. If you?re running a party of 5th level characters through this dungeon, you?d just use the first group. If the party was 15th level, you?d use the first, second, and third group of creatures. The format is fairly intuitive and it seems like it would be easy to use at the gaming table.

As for the adventure itself, it?s pretty standard ?evil necromancer lair? stuff?with a bit of a twist. In order to keep things fresh in an otherwise generic environment, the author used monsters, traps, and spells from a number of open gaming sources. Some of these are a little better than others, but it?s nice to get away from the standard Monster Manual fare of zombies, skeletons, and ghouls (instead we get soulcrows, hanged men, and screaming skulls.)

As an added bonus, the book contains the stats for all of the new traps, spells, and monsters the author used when designing the necromancer?s lair. There are some good ideas here taken from a huge variety of open gaming products, making this a good ?toolkit? for a DM, even if he doesn?t plan to use the dungeon as written.

<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: I grabbed this book because I?m running a one-shot adventure for a group of relative newbies this weekend and I needed something I could throw together without too much effort. I don?t think I?ll be able to use this book as is, but only because its far too long for the single 4-hour session I have planned. I?m glad I got it, though, as I?m sure I?ll be able to make a smaller necromancer?s lair comprised of my favorite bits and pieces of Dungeon Dive 4.

And, that, I think sums this product up nicely. It sets out to give the DM a detailed and interesting dungeon that can be dropped whole cloth or piecemeal into an already established plot (or, in my case, run without much of a plot at all). It definitely achieves this goal.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The maps, while decent-looking, are not at all easy to read. I had trouble finding some of the numbers at first glance, which kind of slowed things down a bit. I?d rather have a plain but functional map than a pretty one that?s hard to read.

I?m also a little lukewarm on a few of the monster choices. That?s not really a flaw of the product, though, and chalks up to personal taste I?m sure. The only reason I mention it in this review is that it takes a little away from the ability to use this book unmodified. Since these monsters are almost all new to me, I had to read them all over a little deeper than I would have liked. Still, most of them are pretty cool, so not a big flaw.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>

Note: I received this copy for free for purposes of reviewing it. I was able to play Dungeon Bash a few times before writing this review.

Dungeon Bash is a set of rules for generating and playing random dungeon-based adventures for D&D. The game doesn?t stand alone (and isn?t really meant to), but works as a supplement to standard D&D. It?s accurately described as a combination of RPG and boardgame.

THE RULES Before actually playing Dungeon Bash, I expected a game that played like a board game based on D&D. In reality, Dungeon Bash is less a board game with D&D roots and more a slightly streamlined 3.5E game with built-in dungeon generator. The characters are basically D&D characters (although the rules point out that some classes work better in the dungeon environment than others), and the combats are conducted using all of the usual D&D rules (initiative, feats, etc.) There are a few feats that are unique to Dungeon Bash, and a few new uses for skills that attempt to make them more useful than they would otherwise be in the random dungeon environment (such as Gather Information.)

A typical session of Dungeon Bash goes a little something like this: players generate a dungeon on the fly and explore it while trying to achieve some sort of goal. This goal usually involves reaching a final room and defeating a big bad evil guy, finding a certain item, or some similar task, although the game has enough variations on this to keep things interesting.

Along the way, players encounter things typical of a traditional dungeon crawl adventure: wandering monsters, NPCS, traps, and treasure. The rules are written assuming you have someone acting as GM, whose job it is to roll random encounters, run the monsters, and generate the dungeon layout. Rules are also included for those without a GM (or for someone playing solo). The random encounter rules are clever and easy to use. I also liked the rules for tracking turn order outside of combat. I thought that the game handled random traps well, but I would have liked to see a more interesting variety of traps.

I was pleased to see the inclusion of NPCs as possible random encounters. The game gives rules for interacting with them, along with corresponding rewards (or unpleasant consequences) depending on what you do and how well you roll. Looking over the list of possible NPC encounters, I can see how things might get a little repetitive once you?ve encounter a handful of NPCs. I would have liked a little more flavor and variety in the encounters and their descriptions. Still, it?s cool that the game includes more than just hostile monster encounters.

OTHER COMPONENTS In addition to the rulebook, Dungeon Bash comes with some other stuff.

TILES AND COUNTERS These are color room and corridor tiles. While the would look best printed out in a color and mounted on backerboards, they didn?t look half bad just printed out in black-and-white and spread out on the gaming table. As a bonus, the tiles would work well in a standard D&D game.

The counters aren?t that impressive, and just feature the name of the creature (i.e. ?goblin?) written in white on a brightly colored background. They?d do in a pinch, but it?s more likely that your average gamer is going to want to tap into his D&D minis when ?Dungeon Bashing.?

TABLES AND SUMMARY The tables include stat blocks for every monster and NPC that you could possibly encounter in the base game. These aren?t just generic SRD monsters, but include many, many opponents with class levels as well. This is a big printout, and I found it a little cumbersome to actually use at the gaming table. Between the rulebook, the monster stats book, the random tables, and the treasure charts?I felt a little overwhelmed by all this stuff. I wonder if the game would play a little easier for a group with a laptop. Since the encounter tables are RTF files, though, it would be fairly easy to simple copy, paste, and print only the tables and creatures you need.

BONUS The download also included area templates, a blank map, a spell reference sheet, and sample characters at 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 10th level.

<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Dungeon Bash is a lot of fun. The game plays like a low-level D&D dungeon crawl, but with minimal preperation. Need something to do on an off-gaming night? Dungeon Bash is the answer.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Dungeon Bash would benefit from more flavor. I think the designers went for generic, and ended up a bit too vanilla. There is plenty of room for expansion, though, and it wouldn?t take much to add things like themed dungeons, custom NPC encounter charts, unique traps, etc. to make the game a little spicier.

To their credit, the Other Game Company seems to realize this, and their website hints at a number of expansions (at least two of which will be free to those who buy the original) in the works.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>