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It's 30 d100 tables of the writing prompt style, plus about 9 "condition" tables for rolling up such things as a madness and its duration.
I don't recommend paying $7.40, given the similar but free inspirational materials both on DriveThru and the wide net.
Contents:
1) 67 pages of sample rolls, each with an item description based on the table results. Ex: given "Crude Big Water Chain" the author writes about a chain onced used to anchor a ship; you can make trip attacks with it.
2) 26 d100 tables for getting a writer thinking outside the obvious. About half of these tables are adjectival, the other half item lists. Ex: a roll on "Sequence" then on the "Potpourii" misc item table can give you "new-fangled abacus" or "third skunk."
3) 9 tables pertaining to fright/poison/etc. (It would be a higher count, but "Poisoned" and "Sickened" are cut/paste identical, and several columns are duplicates or at least highly interchangable.)
One is a d4 table, the rest are d20.
A new release has some useful changes:
1) The previous release of the book was 267meg; the cleaned-up version is 8meg.
2) there's now a table of contents, including clickable hyperlinks
Missing in the Table of contents:
1) table "random" is not listed.
2) the 6-7 condition tables are lumped into one entry. (As it's a book of tables, this obfuscates their existence -- they're not in the ToC and people don't expect more chapters after finding the glossary/index.)
The technical presentation has vastly improved over the last release, but its content isn't competitive.
removed from review: several layout complaints, referred to by author's response.
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Creator Reply: |
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Huh. Noted. I'll try to fix this up and let you know when it's been more optimized. Some of this I hadn't considered - so thanks. |
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Alright, well I've attempted to fix some of the things you've indicated - I hope that the updated links & the table of contents will suffice to fulfill your request for a better master-table.
If the PDF is still showing the orphaned paragraphs - I'm not sure why - can you let me know if you're still having that problem? |
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The design is wonderful, but the technical layout is crippling -- the whole dungeon is on one "page" but that page has been extended to roughly 6 times the normal length of a portrait page.
the PDF is 32 meg per "long page" so my pdf viewer (skim on OSX) is dying under the load of rendering even one page of this.
I hoped that I could just print it and be done with digital problems, but since the dungon's page is abnormal ratio, I have the option of either having a natural zoom/ratio picture of the middle 20%, or rescaling it down to fit, resulting in an unreadable strip of art down the middle.
Note to Author
If you reformat it to make it usable, such as either of the following, I'll update my review. (The art deserves 5 stars)
- pdf with print-friendly page dimensions
- a jpg per dungeon (if you can't abide nasty page breaks in the art. This would allow client-side rendering to adapt to circumstances in a way the pdf format was designed to not do.)
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Creator Reply: |
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Hi Alexander - thanks for your feedback! These 'banner-style' maps are all drawn in segments, then pieced together (6 in total) to form the extra long map. As such, they can be printed as high res pdfs using the 'Multiple Pages' option while printing (Acrobat Reader). Each 'segment' is the size of a standard portrait page (8.5" x 11") and should match up when printed on a regular desktop printer. If one has access to a larger format printer or print shop and plan to print the entire map, then the large file size will ensure a better quality print (up to at least 200% without resolution loss). The product was designed with this in mind. That said, if a jpeg or png file will work better for you, feel free to send me an email ([email protected]) and I'll provide a link with these formats along with a smaller pdf (file size). I'm not sure if this completely addresses your issue, but thanks again for the feedback and it's something I will definitely keep in mind with future products, particularly these oversized maps. And I'm happy you like the art! - Randy M. |
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This boils each aspect of play down to either an elevator-pitch sized one liner, or elides it.
What sets this apart from similar products in the super-simple end of the design spectrum is that this one's legibility is crippled by layout.
These three factors compound each other:
- the background art that is behind every part of the text swamps the contrast of the text.
- every "chapter" is one long line, wrapped a dozen times in a full-justified block.
- massive inch-plus margins is eating space that could have been spent on desparately needed text structuring, and looks bad with the background art to boot.
Once you grind past those to the content, you find a bunch of reasonably standard dnd-isms. (As the author mentioned, this is for an already-versed audience.) Instead of these elements being short but building on each other to create an emergent game with some novelty, this looks like what you'd get if you sat a table of gamers together and told them they had 30 minutes and two pages to list the critical mechanics.
There are far more usable one-pagers. It would be harder to use this as a reference for play than to just wing it from memory.
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Creator Reply: |
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Sigh. "But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." Mark 6:4 ;-)
Okay, since I neither expect nor want any of my gaming stuff to support me, I don't mind telling reviewers when I think they've gone totally off the reservation, as I believe Alexander has done here. But, for the same reason it also doesn't bother me to discuss my games, even when the review is negative, because they truly are a labor of love.
So.
Here's your problem Alexander. You didn't read this. If you did, you read the title, saw that the whole thing fit on one page, saw that the typing was cramped, maybe gave the monster list a terse looking-over, and consigned it to the dustbin of role playing. Fine. Not your cup of tea.
However, what you failed to see is that Swordsmen & Skeletons DOES EXACTLY WHAT IT SETS OUT TO DO. No higher praise is possible. Let me explain.
I'm a kind of a revolutionary's revolutionary, within the Oed revolution. I decided -within this line, and a few others, but by no means all with of my products - to see if I could REALLY create an Oed clone that actually has all the rules necessary to play a long running campaign, to moderately high level, and containing all of the elements necessary to play and enjoy, on a single sheet of paper.
I did this because I really wanted to show people that it was possible, and it is. However, and again, YOU HAVE TO READ IT CAREFULLY. If you do, you will see that not only everything necessary, but everything needed to have a good time is all here. You can purchase any Oed module for any Oed system, staple a copy of Swordsmen & Skeletons into the back of it, and have all you will need to play, with a little imagination and without consulting any other rulebooks.
See below:
CHARACTERS: Within six races and three character classes, and through minimization, you have all that you need to play a variety of character types, certainly at least equal to what's available in the original rules.
HOW TO PLAY: The default rules of the system are simple and concise. A single paragraph enters pretty much any question most players will have about what options are available, and how they are adjudicated. In any rpg there will always be calls for GM discretion -that's what keeps rpgs from being Monopoly- but we have found that, in practice, these are few and far between, with no real loss in player options. Of course, you can't compare S&S to something like 3.5, but if you think that level of complexity is desirable, you are probably not into the Oed revolution in the first place.
SPELLS: By using default rules and minimization (and, again, you have to read the default rules carefully) you will see that we have over forty spells through two character classes and five spell levels that are geared toward dungeoneering and combat, which are the foci of this game. Most of the spells have only a few very brief words added to the default rules, but, in all cases we (my players and I) have found that the rules are sufficient to describe exactly how the spell functions, whether it is ranged, whether saving throws apply, how many targets are effected, etc. What more do you want?
MONSTERS: Within a list of 18 relatively standard fantasy creatures and two special abilities (which can be applied to extend the list literally to hundreds of higher level monsters) you have a playable list that allows dungeon crawls of relatively high levels. This gives a variety of about equal to that found in Oed. I will point out that my players did think the list was too brief, and so I added in another one page product (God help us!) called New Monsters For Swordsmen and Skeletons, which adds in some 80 additional encounters and magic items (see below) and 10 new additional abilities, extending the game to something like an Advanced edition, with literally thousands of monsters and variant monsters possible. Again, all is accomplished by minimization and cross-referencing, with each monster effectively given all of the stats and description needed for play, within a single (yes, somewhat cramped) line of text.
MAGIC ITEMS: Here is where all of the minimization, cross-referencing and default rules really come together, and also manage to add a certain campaign flavor to the S&S system. While it would appear at first glance that no list of magic items exist, in fact, there are a large number (roughly 200) as, in addition to relatively basic elements like enchanted weapons and armor, each spell provides one or more magic items, and there is also a simple system of "monstrous amulets" and "spirit amulets" that give us an insight into the thaumaturgical/metaphysics that pervade the world of Kyrthandria, the campaign setting from another of our one page products "A Swiftly Falling Empire."
A relatively low maximum spell level combines with a proportionately large availability of those spells to the lower levels of spellcaster, and with the "monstrous" and "spirit" based amulets, gives us the idea that the gods of Kyrthandria are relatively primitive animal and spirit totems; full of raw power and yet not fully evolved. All of this and the relatively warlike nature of most of the spells (including the priestly ones) gives us a primitive and savage sword & sorcery style setting, in some ways reminiscent of fictional realms like those of Brak or Kull. This was intentional.
I should also point out that, while S&S is an Oed clone, and was primarily written to give any player and GM the chance to adventure at low expense and easy learning curve in an Oed setting and system, it has its own quirks. Characters are relatively powerful at low levels, though this tapers off as higher levels are attained. This has something of a "squeezing" effect on play, with second-by-second survivability at first and second levels being a little less pronounced, but without characters becoming god-killers at 12th level, which I have often seen happen in other versions of the original system. On the other hand, raising the dead is almost impossible (almost, but not quite, see New Monsters for the lone exception) which means that, while its a little harder to lose your character, you'd better play things tactically, because Death has a certain permanence (as in our real world, and most fantasy worlds of fiction) when he arrives.
In closing, I believe that S&S accomplished something I've never before seen successfully done. Within about 1-3 pages, you can game through at least the fifteenth level of play in two detailed campaign worlds in a simple, concise system that answers all of your questions without the need for endless rules lawyering, let alone massive expense, and yet without the gloss and handwavium that keeps players wondering what to do, or just makes them lose interest altogether.
These are not just empty words. I have put my money where my mouth is by running a successful nine month long campaign using S&S, New Monsters and A Swiftly Falling Empire, in which much fun was had by all, play ran smoothly, and a lot of in-depth role playing was accomplished. By the end of the campaign, one character was a landed baron, two were Imperial generals and a large number of courtly intrigues had been engaged in, by players who were well immersed in the setting. Not bad for some four pages of rules.
At the moment, I am running a campaign on Roll20 using S&S and Nazis & Nightmares, another of our one page products that expands S&S for fast-paced WW2 horror/supers gaming. We have played about four sessions so far. I am sad to say that, for the moment, at least, the Allies are being badly beaten. The Wehrmacht is at the gates of Moscow and the Imperial Japanese army is ripping through East Asia. We can only hope that our valiant commandos will bring about a triumph for truth, justice, and the American way, but this is by no means a certainty.
You are more than welcome to stop by our Roll20 "Nazis & Nightmares" group sometime, if you'd care to see how it plays, as opposed to how you think it plays ;-)
Cheers |
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I'm mostly reviewing the quick but cute {1d6}{1d6} tables: one d36 for a PC background detail hook that'll be a recurring complication, and the adventure idea creator (6 tables of d36)
(I skimmed past the core mechanics themselves to read later; I've already got a few favorite engines, but I'm always interested in good idea-tables.)
Also, I typically spend no words on art as it has no effect on gameplay, but not only is the art/layout and excellent example of how to publish an RPG, many pieces not only can, but are begging me to be used as player handouts.
As a quick show-n-tell, here's an off the cuff PC and first adventure:
stats are straight 3d6 in order, with four stats instead of the classic 6:
11,11,6,9 -- Bob now has a dump stat of INT and is otherwise average.
3 classes, I'll go for "totally not a thief" and get this engine's version of the industry standard perks.
Vocation: player spins their PC however they want and mechanically get a die-boost when it's justifiable --
I declare Bob's a failed wizard's apprentice who spent years cleaning up after toxic and reality-corrosive experiments at the Unseen University.
first table! "Why...?", {1,6} Bob has a debt to a supernatural entity.
Heh; how about Bob's department's master wizard was expecting to still have a corporeal body at the end of the experiment, and after Bob's poor handling of a task leads to disaster, Monsieur Suddenly Immaterial's teeth grating can be heard from the astral plane. the wizard's rage is only kept in check by the fact that only Bob can restore him to his body.
Game effect: whenever Bob's player invokes Bob's complication for a die-boost, the GM has this fuming poltergeist will at some point make a demand that makes Bob & friends' life difficult.
On to the adventure generator!
goal {4,3} "guard/protect an important person"
important location to the plot {1,2} "ruins of ... a sorcerer's tower"
antagonist {5,3} "intelligent monster... an alien"
supporting character {4,4} "a mythological creature"
complication {1,4} "the characters' weapons are useless"
quest reward {1,2} "giant precious gem"
Going with the first idea that ties the above together: Guard S.I.'s body from a body-jumping Yith, while the competent apprentices go find and recover the Gem of Ultimate Shiny from the "Tower of Arrrgh..." so S.I. can use it as the lens for a soul-bind.
"Team A" never returns, so it falls to our PCs to pick up the pieces: the gem is (a) the size of a table and (b) all of Team A have been astrally trapped in the gem upon laying a finger on it. So the PCs have to convince a Daoist golem to carry the untouchable gem, but it's holding up a load bearing wall in the Tower.
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you get:
A little over 100 professions of random importance levels (beggars and archmages and everything in between) and a few tiny tables that don't count.
breakdown:
4 pages, which on average are half blank. (these tables, formatted in a reasonable way, would take up about two pages.)
0 pages of cover, designer's notes, or ads.
d100 professions. (one difference from the many other d100 profession tables out there is the inclusion of heavy movers and shakers in the list. This is overall a "YMMV" distinction, as rolled straight you'll end up with a population with twice as many royal brats in the line of succession as you'd have farmers.)
d12 backgrounds. (Which are not different from professions in any visible way, and have synonyms with the first list, so why these get a different list is not obvious.)
d12 species:
There's two flavors of each non-human (like in the TSR days, we've got hill dwarves and mountain dwarves), so humans would be a marginalized surpassing only Tiefs and dragonborn in population.
d6 alignments:
it's using the standard 9-way terminology, but there are only 6 entries, and those 6 are most of the goody-two-shoes alignments. (LG and CG are both double entries, and the last two are LN and N)
The author is baking heavy assumptions into a really basic table -- a table basic enough that any GM can create one more appropriate for their setting with zero effort.
d?? number of siblings:
It's technically a d3 table, but the results are inconsistent: on a 1, maybe I have two siblings, but on a 2, I definitely have two siblings? If there was any real content here, I'd recommend the author unpack that into a d6 table, but really, this isn't a useful distribution.
d6 parent survival:
Your dad has a 50% chance to be alive, same for your mom. But this table skews it in favor of single-parents, so instead of flipping two coins (resulting in a 25% chance of both parents) you only have 17% chance. This table does it's job, but it was another trite job in the first place.
constructive criticism for the author:
1) a little bit of tightening up the layout would cut your page count in half. And don't have one table split across 4 pages; that's a real PITA.
2) designer's notes -- for example, a paragraph on why your alignment table is set up this way. Or why your world intentionally has so few humans in it. Or what's different about a background that those shouldn't just be part of the profession table.
2) math
For species (and perhaps others), look into bell curves: given the # of your entries, a 2d8 table would allow you to stop doubling up entries like Tief and Dragonborn and also have more control about relative population sizes.
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Creator Reply: |
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Thank you! We will look into this and work on these, for both the next book and a possible rework of this one. |
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Adds nothing but wasted time to a task that was done far better than this in every edition of dnd ever published.
This boils down to thumbing to the first treasure table in your own RPG, using a card pull that has very little usable entropy compared to using the usual dice, and then finishing the rest of the now-stunted treasure generation procedure as you would have without the cards.
These cards don't add variety to your game; they nearly zero it out; even if the product had as much diversity as the roll it's replacing, you go through cart->purchase->download->print->cut just to remove a single roll of a d100.
contents breakdown:
1 page cover,
1 page about the rocket-science that is printers, cards and scissors (and plugging author's other products)
1 page with 9 randomly rolled up treasures, dominated by trite and trivial results that require you to then roll on your own RPG's tables to actually flesh out.
1 page of "card backs". (no art, just the word "treasure".)
1 page of ads for author's products.
example:
pulling card 8 says roll 1d6, with results ranging from "Two 2nd level cleric spell" to "One 3rd level magic spells." (sic)
constructive criticism for the author:
Focus on creating truely unique results that couldn't be reproduced by 30 seconds of time in a DMG or 5 seconds on a generator website, with hooks, quirks, and flavor on every card, or go the other way and write a generator with a novel card combos or trading gimmick.
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