It is nice to once again see a product that details the finer art of Ghost Busting. What really amazes me is how well the two products work together and have very little duplicated material. It is rare to see that in the d20 market. Usually books that cover the same subject cover the subject in mostly the same way. But with this and with RPG Object?s Blood and Ghosts people will get two products that work well together.

Green?s Guide to Ghosts is a PDF by the guys at Twelve to Midnight. This forty eight page book has a nice lay out and some good art. The book is well book marked and come in both a print version and an on screen version. The on screen has the art, color, and just looks really good. The print version is black and white and still well laid out. They did a nice job with the look of the book.

The book is one of the rare ones that has little for the player. It has good equipment but no classes or feats are in the book. I should probably repeat that since in this day and age of d20 a book with no classes and no feats or even skills or player options is unheard of. Heck, a lot of adventures seem to have the random feat and class in an appendix these days. The book has adventures for running this type of game. That is actually what I was hoping for from this book. 12 to Midnight has not made a lot of books, but their adventures have really been good. I was pleased to see that their style and skill for adventures was used here.

There is some really fun stuff in here. I like the template that turns a character into a ghost. The options that opens up for role playing and for seeing characters die and come back is great. There is a table for s?ances. There is a chance on it that the medium will be taken over by the dead grandmother of one of the players. There is a great ten tips for running more horror based games. It has some nice simple tips to really help the game happen and be a little more scary and less campy.

I do not like to give spoilers for adventures so I will just say there are some cool adventures here. They have three that are fully written up. None are that long but can easily be stretched out and a good DM can really use them to start some greater. Even better are the little adventure ideas in here. They have a little less then fifty adventure ideas in here.

As I said in the first paragraph I am really impressed on how well this goes with Blood and Ghosts. That one is more player oriented The equipment lists do cover some of the same material but for the most part they compliment each other nicely. I also want to mention that the book works well for Orpheus, a White Wolf game that is about ghost hunting. The rules for that game are not d20 but the ideas can be used together. Orpheus does have a much bigger plot oriented to the game with a lot of the assumptions on ghosts fully detailed in there.

Green?s Guide to Ghosts does a nice job of presenting the supernatural for a D20 game. They also have the book designed for Savage World and while I have not seen that version, it is really cool to see other game systems being supported for this book.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Dungeon Crawl Classics #0: Legends are Made, not Born There is something fun with running a module designed for characters just starting out. And not module that I have seen does that better then a this module since it is for zero level characters. They have zero level characters mean a character with one level in an NPC class. And they have six sample NPCs in the back of the book. When I ran it instead of doing NPC classes I used weak racial classes but the power level is about the same and the players found the module to be of the appropriate challenge.

Dungeon Crawl Classics #0: Legends are Made, not Born is an adventure by Goodman Games. It is written by Chris Doyle. The adventure is thirty two pages long with maps on the inside of both covers as well as a taking up a page front and back. Jeremy Simmons did a very nice job on the cartography and that combined with the Erol Otus cover really makes this feel like an older edition module.

This is review will reflect action my players took in the course of the adventure and have many spoilers. Please do not read it if you are going to ever be a player in this module!

The module is set up so the players are part of a village and they need to go rescue some villagers. I had the PCs be from out of the village and be hired to investigate. However one decides to do it there is an ogre that kidnapped the people. The village has been paying the ogre for years and this is the first time that he ever took someone. It seems like a pretty basic set up and a bit of a mystery to solve. Not much of one though as the players will have everything revealed if they are looking for answers or not.

The cave entrance is rather basic. There is a second entrance that the Pcs can use if they learn about it but my guys never did. Inside the cavern is some sheep that could easily alert the first guard but if they can get past them they can sneak up on the Hobgoblin guard. I was surprised to see a hobgoblin with two warrior levels as the first real threat. My players choose to bribe him and have him lead them to the ogre though they did eventually have to fight him. That battle went well as the players ambushed him. Past the hobgoblin is a chained wolf. My players never had to fight it as they just gave him plenty of meat to be happy. There is a trap that could kill a person iof they are unlucky. And then one comes to the Ogre.

The Ogre is a smaller ogre and drugged a bit by the villagers ale. This will really help the PCs when the battle him. Still it is a very tough fight as a good hit was enough to bring down one PC at a time. It can be a tough fight. To get farther one will need to find some secret doors. It wasn?t that hard and the doors are where one would expect them. One door leads to the section of caves that goes to the second entrance. This is a wilder cave that has a dire skunk and a Bat Swarm the PCs could run into. It has a room of mushrooms that can prove deadly but PCs that get by it will be rewarded with some potions found on a dead elf. My players did not want to chance it as it is not obvious what lies beyond the mushrooms. There is also a tomb buried here. One will need to bash or pick the locks on the door. My players ignored it but inside is a ghoul. The importance of this is there is a cold iron long sword that could be very helpful later on in the module.

The other secret door leads to the under cavern where the big bad wizard and his plans are being finished. Basically the ogre was charmed by this weakened wizard and now the wizard is going to summon a big powerful demon. He is following the directions he got from ?the Voice Below?. I?m not goingto completely spoil what that is but it was the toughest battle in the module and that long sword would have helped the players out.

There are some animated books with great names for titles as well as an animated broom the players must fight. The prisoners are easy to free. The wizard is fifth level but luckily he has just the spells to hinder the PCs and not the ones that would out right kill them. But he?s weak enough that good hit or two will take him down.

The module is a good beginning adventure with plenty of room for role playing or pure hack and slash. This can be a good building point on a campaign as there are some things the module foreshadows that the DM can expand upon and have the PCs chase after later. It is a tough module for such weak characters and it is possible for character death even though my group did not have that happen. They did have to retreat out of the caves twice to heal up though.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Strange Places: Hollowed Tree Tower At time a DM needs something a little quirky or a little odd to get the creativity flowing. There have been many products out there that can do this. There are even a few series of PDFs that are just ideas and things one can place in their game. But few are as a strange and I am not sure any are as a sad as the little story elements that are in this PDF.

Strange Places: Hollowed Tree Tower is the first in a new PDF series by Dog Soul publishing. Deborah Balsam must have a bit of free time on her hands as she wrote this, did all the cartography, and the lay out. It is a twenty four page PDF half of those being full page full color maps one can print out and use at the gaming table. The PDF is book marked but I would have liked to see it list more then just the floors and the random encounter table.

This is not an adventure. It is just a small place for one to explore. There are no monsters or traps or terrible obstacles one has to get through. It is a unique place with a simple history that one can basically piece together from the few remaining clues that are left behind. But it is not the type of product the fully spells everything out. There are chests in there that it suggests what may be inside but does give definitive answers as what is in there. In fact the whole little story written here is something that can be completely tossed. There are two versions of the maps for this place. The first ones are mapped with the furniture and items the place describes. The second set is just the rooms empty of all furnishings.

There is a little story to this all though I may have some of the items wrong as I will repeat the book does not spell everything out. It seems to be the remains and I mean that literally of pair of lovers. She died first and he devoted himself to her possible before as well as after her death. There are many items that can foreshadow the events of what happened and some really are quite shocking and in the right group can really provide an emotional response. This is not a product designed for hack and slash. It is designed for a group that wants something different from the game.

Strange Places Hollowed Tree Tower is a strange place. It has a small random encounter table but it is not really designed to serve as a place of combat. It is a nice and simple place for low level characters to explore. It is made to be a little bit modular and it is designed so that one can easily toss out the love story they have and insert whatever one wants in its place. It is a well written site with easy to read and use maps.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Simple and easy to use in most settings<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Feels like a story being told to the players and little for then to interact with<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Everyone Else is an E-Book by Ambient. The book is full of the more mundane Non Player Characters that fill up a campaign world. This book is very well done and will be useful for any DM that uses NPCs in their game. The E-Book is seventy pages in length and is filled with useful information.

The lay out is absolutely beautiful. There is a very good theme of images and pictures that give this product a medieval feel. I really like the look of this book. It sets the tone and helps put one into the mood of the people stating out here. The pictures are simple looking, yet really fit perfectly into this product.

The product comes with two versions. One is created to print, and the other one is for easy using on the computer. I?m very happy with seeing companies do this. It?s great having products that can be easily printed out and at the same time can be easily used on the laptop at the gaming table. The version to use on the computer is very easy to use. There is a side index that allows one to easily jump to the different section. One can even bookmark places for easy reference later. I really like this style with the E-Book of two versions one designed for printing, the other for the computer.

The book starts off with a simple introduction. It tells exactly what this is and what to expect. Then it goes into a full-page table of contents, which shows all the different types of people that are in this product. Then it goes into the sections on the stat blocks. The stat blocks are the main focus of the book, but that?s not all that?s in here. Each type of person is fully defined and shown how one can use them. Then it has different rules to remember like suggested synergy bonuses and DCs for certain skills the person will most likely use. This will save a lot of time from looking it up in a different book. Then come the actually stat block. They give examples for each character type at level one, three, five, and seven. And then it lists some suggestions for customizing the stat blocks. They suggest are what skills to switch ranks in and what feats to swap. It is all very well done.

There are thirteen different sections as the book groups related NPCs together. The first section is In The Shadow, which covers Bartender, Fences, Smuggles and others. Then is On the Docks that includes Dock Workers, Sailors, and Navigators. Next is On the Farm or In the Village, which has among the NPCs Animal Trainers, Herders, and Vintners. Then is In the Woods, which has the Hunter and Tracker. On the Jobsite has Unskilled Laborers and Masons. In the Shop has Brewers and Smiths. In the Market has Art Dealers and Shopkeepers. At Your Service has Clerks and Lawyers. At the Bedside covers people like Midwifes and Surgeons. For the Greater Glory covers Missionaries and Hermits. In the Bureaucracy deals with Jailors and Lawyers. At the Barracks has Conscripts and Town Guards. And In the Castle has Diplomats and Spies. Now those are not the only people covered in this book. I think there are about 90 different types of people in here. It?s hard to imagine a common character type that is not somehow covered in this book.

The book only uses the NPC classes from the Dungeon Masters Guide and makes good use of the Commoner Class. All the people in here are human and have very average ability scores. The few errors in here like Clubs being listed as having a x3 critical multiplier are easy to overlook and will not get in one?s way. This is a great book and will be extremely beneficial to Dungeon Masters everywhere.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Scaring people in a role playing game can be tough. It takes a lot of the right elements to make players experience the fear and it really does not take much to have them removed from fear. A simple car alarm going off, a player just not into it, a phone call; anything can really take the players out of the horror game at least mentality. They can play scared, but it just is not the same as actually being scared. Sometimes a DM needs to just place in rules to effect the characters knowing that bringing horror to the players might be too much to ask for. There have been a few different systems that have tried this like Beyond the Supernatural and Call of Cthulthu have used different rules to do this in the past. I think Ravenloft for D&D as well as D20 also had similar fear like rules in them. Fear Effects once again brings the fear mechanics to the game.

Fear Effects is by a small publisher who really has been making an effort to bring horror back the game. 12 to Midnight has a few really nice adventures and supplements that move in the more traditional horror ways. Fear Effects is written by Ed Wetterman and this thirteen page book is well laid out. There is not a lot of art in her and it does consist of about half table but it is nicely organized and easy to use. The PDF has two formats one designed for printing and the other for one screen use. This is my preferred way to see the books as it gives me the best of both worlds. The on screen on is nicely book marked and should be really easy to use at the gaming table from a computer or lap top.

The book is fairly simple. It introduces fear checks that are basically saving throws into the game. There are different levels of severity in the saves and the tables cover a lot of bad things that can happen to a character. The check can be modified by some options and I really like what they have there. One gets a bonus if they experience fear with others but a nice negative if they are alone. That is simple and makes a lot of sense. The tables of effects are pretty complete as it covers about six pages of the book.

This is a very simple book to determine if one needs it and that makes things easy. If one needs horror checks or wants to experiment with them in one?s game then the book is what one is after. On the other hand if one sees no reason for adding mechanical and rule oriented fear checks to the game then the book is better left on the self. The table are good for other horror games as ideas for what to do to characters that experience great fear. World of Darkness and Call of Cthulthu games can especially benefit from more ways to mess with the characters but of course one will need to do more converting and figure out how these will exactly work in other rule sets.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Every now and I again I will be reading a blog or post on the net somewhere and it will lead me to review something. There is a lot of stuff out there to be reviewed so occasionally it is up to fate by what I randomly come across that leads to a review. This was not so much fate but just something I read and I could not recall if I had reviewed these. I had not so here I am now reviewing it. No one ever asks me why I review the things I review but here is one of the ways it happens anyhow.

Loot 4 Less Volume one Rings and Things is a PDF by Owen KC Stephens. It is published by Interactive Design Adventures. Not enough people seem to know who he is. He has done some really good things for D&D and Star Wars and is on the short list of game writers that if I see or hear his name is attached to a product I know I at least want to look at it. The PDF is one of the many small PDFs on the market; this is only a dozen pages long. It has a simple lay out and no art. The black and white PDF though does have good book marks.

The series is only concerned with creating cheaper new magical items. I like that the focus is just for items worth less then twenty five hundred gold. This makes it a great PDF that supports the low level game and also the low magic game. It would be very interesting to have a low magic campaign that never has items worth more then the twenty five hundred limit.

The book starts with new armor enchantments. It introduces at the half bonus. Some of the magical enchantments are just not worth a +1 bonus mark up so combine any two of them to get the +1 bonus or just have one and use their plus one half chart pricing system. There are ones like fleet that allow a person to run faster in heavy armor that are quite useful. Others like Elusive that just gives a armor class bonus to ranged attacks might get a bit complex to have different armor class for different types of attacks. Restful is very nice as with a fort save a person can sleep min medium or heavy armor and not be fatigued. Those types of enchantments are very useful.

Some of the weapon enchantments also have the half bonus idea that armor uses. I like the proficient enchantment which has no penalty for no proficiency use. A willing weapon can be drawn as a free action or sheathed as a free action if one has quick draw feat. There are some specific weapons and one of the neat ones is the fencing sword. It is a rapier that has a critical range of one greater though it follows the rules of stacking critical ranges as if was enchanted.

Lastly the book has a few magical rings. There are some good and simple to use ones like the Ring of Agility that grants a plus one bonus to all dexterity based skills. The ring though has to be warn for a week before the magic takes effect. There is a nice sidebar on the pricing of the item too. There is the ring of clotting that automatically stabilizes the wearer when they go to negative hit points. That can safe lives easily. There are a lot more rings then armor and weapons and many like the Ring of Literacy are nice utility items.

The Loot 4 Less series really shows off Owen KC Stephens? creativity and very solid understanding of the d20 magic system. It is just one of those really nice books that I feel players and DMs will find plenty of useful magical items in but nothing that one has to be fearful of being game breaking.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Some days it is just easier to review two small PDFs of a similar theme and voice. That is why one is getting reviews of book of these PDFs done today. A little extra time and a couple of nice books to read really makes the job rather easy. This is the second book in the series and so far that is all there is. It would be nice to see a Wondrous Items one day but I know these small PDFs can be a dicey deal for writers.

Loot 4 Less Volume 2 Rods Staffs and Wands is another PDF by Owen KC Stephens. It is published by Interactive Design Adventures. Owen has done some really good things for D&D and Star Wars and is on the short list of game writers that if I see or hear his name is attached to a product I know I at least want to look at it. The PDF is one of the many small PDFs on the market; this is only a sixteen pages long. It has a simple lay out and no art. The black and white PDF though it has no book marks.

The book starts off with another good introduction to magical items and points out that the items here are all less then twenty five hundred gold in price. The items here are not supposed to be one shot items either making them both low cast and useful for a while.

The book starts off with rods. There is a rod that is a magical grappling hook, another that helps influence NPCs favorably. My favorite is a Rod of smashing doors that gives a nice bonus to smash doors. I easily get tired of all the doors in dungeons and that little item will really help with that. There is a nice side bar in determining the cost of such odd items. I really like how the author really uses side bard to explain things.

Staffs of course are very expensive and have charges. Both of those concepts goes against what this PDF wants to do so they have brilliantly came up with a new way to use staffs. They spells in the staffs become like prepared spells to the caster and known spells so they can be cast using the characters own resources. They just have to have the staff with them. Of course that?s not how staffs work and there is even a one page large sidebar that constructs these staffs like standard ones for people that want that.

The way wands work is also redefined. I like that they move away from the pistol style of the current want system and make them something else Wands the way they have it can increase caster level, damage, range, and a whole mess of different things for one school or possible just one spell. These type of items will be great for a specialist wizard. Even general casters can find that a certain type of wand will shape the way they start to prepare for adventures and with their spell selection.

This one is even better then the first book in the series. Owen does such a great job with creativity and redefining what certain items are and how they can be used. And the items are frankly better for it.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The Mother of All Treasure Tables It is always nice to see a product one likes but more importantly to see a pair of companies one likes working together. When I saw Tabletop Games and Necromancer were both involved in this project I knew I just had to get it. It makes it one of those rare books I bought that I review. I just do not have a lot of time to review things I buy but everyone once in a while I have to make an exception to that. Mother of All Treasure Tables was an easy choice for such an exception.

Mother of All Encounter Tables is a good sized book designed by Daniel Brakhage and Vicki Potter. It is available in print and PDF and is one of those collaboration books with ten authors given writing credits. The PDF version has book marks though only each table and not each result is marked. The book has the usual high quality Necromancer lay out and good black and white art inside.

The idea behind the book is rather simple. There are ten tables in here and on each table there are one hundred different variations of treasure. Well, the first nine table have one hundred the last table with its vast amounts only has ten. Each table is around a gold piece value by two percent. The first table is small treasures worth around ten gold pieces, the next fifty gold pieces, the next one hundred gold pieces and the last one being a half million or more. It does not just give one coins and such there is some great descriptions of the different items that are found. What is nice is the treasure here is not magical. That is easy for DM?s to do and add on. This is the more interesting mundane treasures that seem to get ignored. This is a great product for a low or no magic campaign as these treasures will really fit that type of campaign. But even games with magic need treasure troves filled with unusual items that can easily spark an interest in players.

Here is a sample of just one of the treasure descriptions.

You find a cylindrical ivory case, slender and as long as your arm [32 gp]. It holds a roll of thick, high-quality paper. When unrolled, the scroll is nearly four feet long. On it is an exquisite painting of a long-legged water bird with delicate shading in the feathers and in the reeds below [157 gp]. Next to it lies a backpack of mellow golden leather [2 gp] Inside is a folded piece of black silk, which proves to be a slender black dress with laces up the back. It is embroidered all over in large, openwork flowers in a variety of colors [92 gp]. Folded with it is a wide belt of soft black leather [6 gp]. Below, wrapped in a piece of gray wool [2 sp], is a set of three porcelain plaques, each about a hand-span square?their polished white surfaces decorated with delicate renderings of various wildflowers [set 18 gp]. In the bottom of the backpack is a cloth pouch [1 sp] of coins [3 pp, 37 gp, 287 sp, 318 cp], a petite leather pouch [3 sp] with five rose quartz stones [50 gp each] and another cloth pouch [1 sp] holding a bracelet. It is made of carnelian beads, round and smooth in colors ranging from fiery red to nearly cranberry dark [345 gp]. [Total 1,001.58 gp]

As one can read it is well written and has a good amount of detail making these treasures truly remarkable. The book has almost a thousand different treasure troves like that in it. It is a book that one will be hard pressed to fully exhaust.

The Mother of All Treasure Tables is in fact that. It is a simple way for DM?s to place some elaborate treasures into their own game with very little actual work. That makes it a big win in my eyes.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: It is well written and easy to use<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Spycraft This is my Rifle

Spycraft and other modern games that use modern weapons are only as good as the latest information they have published. There are plenty of new guns and new designs hitting the market in the past decade and it can be tough for a RPG to keep up. That is where the Bag Full of Guns series comes in for Spycraft. This is the first PDF in that series and based on what I see here I look forward to seeing more. The small PDF support of Spycraft is nice to see and something I just can not speak enough of.

Bag Full of Guns: This is my Rifle is a PDF for Spycraft by Crafty Games. It is written by Alex Flag and it is very nice to see a consistent voice in the books. The PDF is rather short and comes in two versions. It does not seem like a lot of companies are doing that any more and I am pleased to see Crafty Games doing it. They have the full color version that looks like the main Spycraft book and then they have a simple black and white version that is a lot easier to print out especially for people with personal inkjet printers. The PDF is not that big being only seven pages long but it is book marked.

This Spycraft books deals with a few of the newest rifles and weapons of the United States Military. There is some good information on these weapons and not being a gun expert I am just going to assume it is all accurate. It works well for the game at any rate. One of the weapons is a nice Carbine. There is a shot gun system and a grenade launcher. Each is of course fully stated up in the Spycraft fashion. There is also some weapon qualities presented in the book. I like that not all of them are positives like the Limited Upgrades Quality. There is an upgrade in the book of the Airburst Fire Control System. I imagine a few players will be having a lot of fun with that one.

The weapons in here can also be used by other game systems with a good conversion. There is no conversion advice in here but moving to other games like d20 Modern will be easy while something more like World of Darkness will be a bit tougher. The weapon descriptions though are useful for any game set in modern times

This is a good addition to the Spycraft game. The short PDFs might be the way to go but I hope to see some more with a little more length at some point. It would also be interesting to see some of these that are tied with the cutting edge of weapons like on Discovery Channel?s Future Tech TV show. But I am sure that I am like a lot of Spycraft fans and just really happy to see the game getting some good quality support.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Nice up to date information<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: a little on the small side <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Inns can serve as a great place for characters to rest in between adventures or can become an adventure for a well prepared DM. Necromancer has a book of Inns that I like very much and it was not until seeing Unusual Inns that I find a book almost as good. I am a fan of using Inns and having places characters can hear about and seek out. Or just to serve as a resting place that the characters do not expect so much more from.

Unusual Inns is a PDF by Heyoka Games. It is written by Rogan Hamby and it is his writing that really makes the product. That is because there are no game mechanics in this. It is designed to be used in a fantasy setting but it does not assume one is going to use it for D&D. It does not fit perfectly really anywhere so a little tweaking will be needed but one can easily use this with GURPS, Hero Fantasy, Palladium Fantasy, Burning Wheel, Warhammer, Blue Rose, or perhaps even D&D. It is of course not limited to just those games either. The PDF is well written and has a good lay out. It is also nicely book marked.

There are five Inns described here all written up as if part of a newsletter from a royal exploration society. There are no maps of the inns and just some basic names of the inn keepers and possible a few other important people. The focus is on the feel of the inn and some kind of quirky thing that is going on with it. The report about each Inn actually can make a handy prop to give the players. Each one sets up a possible adventure seed for the PCs to investigate. It is more exploration and discovery of what is going on then dealing with the latest evil thing to kill. Though in one or two of these a great big evil thing might be found. The book though does offer answers in a DM section. I really liked this part as it seems to be a new trend to set things up in a gaming book but never explain them.

The book does build on many myths and ideas from our own world. For instance one of the inns deals with the fey and the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Another one uses Egyptian gods like Bast. There is also one that could possible deal with angels. These type of things could easily be changed to help fit the setting.

The book does a nice job of presenting unusual inns but more it does it in an unusual way. It does have a nice writing style about it and even though it does not give menus or a layout like usual inns might get; this book presents the mystery and interesting bits of the Inn. The more mundane parts of the inns is something simpler for a DM to create on their own.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Creative and well written<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: parts might be a little too specific for easy use<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

If there is one word fantasy gamers hold sacred it would be treasure. One of the most common ways to describe D&D is killing things and taking their stuff. That stuff is obviously treasure and there is never enough of it. And there never seems to be enough of it printed up in books. There just seems to be treasure every where in d20 books and Hoards is a book all about treasure.

Hoards is a PDF put out through Dark Quest Games. It is actually done through Inkwell Press but they went under and it is good to see all the people that contributed to this still get to see it published. The PDF is book marked but the book marks should have been for each item and not just each section. It would really have made this a much easier PDF to be used at the gaming table from a lap top. The lay out and art of this black and white book is pretty good.

Hoards presents plenty of new treasures. It introduces some new coins one can find like the Copper Ingot and the Wolf?s Piece. The book attempts to make some of the coins more valuable with where they are and give them some meaning. There are a few new types of gems and art pieces as well in the book to really help round out the different types of mundane treasures a group of players can locate. . There are other mundane items in here like a pouch of dye or blown glass flower. These are well described and have nice charts for randomly finding them.

The book is mostly magical items though. It starts with some specific armor and shields and weapons. These are well done and there is quite a bit of creativity to them. I prefer these type of items that do not feel generic. I really like the Heavenly Ring. It is a very well defined magical ring that only works for Lawful Good characters. It gives them a nice AC bonus but more importantly some good spell like abilities. It also can have a caster cast a few more low level spells in a given day. There are some items that combine abilities but might also cause some people problems remembering when they happen. For instance the Cloak of Chameleons only functions when the wearer wishes it. It can give a hide bonuses and a miss chance but the miss chance only applies to attackers that are not close to the wearer.

Hoards offers a nice variety of new and interesting magical and mundane items. The PDF is a great way to get magical items as one rarely needs to use the whole book at once. It will be really nice to print out just what one needs and not worry about the other items. The sample hoards they present will really make a DM?s life easier and will save quite a bit of time in rolling and rerolling on multiple different tables.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

I enjoy running adventures and it pleases me to be able to run the Dungeon Crawl Classics right along with the Necromancer ones. When one does that the difference in the approach to the writing and creation of the modules really comes into view. The DCC are usually shorter and a little easier to run with little prep time. The Necromancer ones however are more in-depth with a greater back story and they venture away from typical D&D in more creative fashions. For instance the DCC will usually have a good amount of standard creatures in them. The Necromancer ones have created monsters to fit the modules and use their own Tome of Horrors to pull out a lot of creatures people are not going to be as familiar with. While both lines are very well done I am finding I enjoy the creativity and depth of the Necromancer modules a bit more though I will continue to use both.

The Diamond Fortress is an adventure by Necromancer and disrupted through Kenzer. It can be found as a PDF or in hardcopy. The module is about fifty pages long and designed for character of eleventh through thirteenth levels. The book marks could have been better done and included the specific rooms and each monster and NPC in the back of the book. That would have made it a lot easier to go from room description to the creature stat blocks that are all collected in the back of the book. There was a lot of shuffling of papers around as referenced a few different places in the book for each encounter. While a bit of a pain it was one of the few problems I had with running the adventure.

This review will have spoilers in it so please do not read on if you are going to be a player in the module!!!

The adventure is set up so the players can stumble on it or they can come seeking the place out and be there at the right time. The module starts with a high level wizard elf ghost appearing to the group and warning them of what is going to happen. He gives a little backstory but he withholds some info because he has an agenda. He wants his amulet that he lost and he wants the PCs to get it for him. This is the first part of the module and then he warns of the Diamond Fortress that is coming back in a few days time and the great evil that will be in it. But until the Castle reappears no one is really going to believe the PCs. There is a village of wilderness people and there is a lot of fun role playing that can be had here as the group fills in details about the ruins of the castle and how it disappeared many many years ago. They can also learn about the orc and ogre bandits who have the Amulet though that is not well known. It should be easy with the magic of these level character to get a few good hints as to who has the amulet.

The bandits are tough being orcs and ogres at first with class levels but with some well placed spells the party should handle them with some ease. They have the numbers and if melee combat happens the party could be in trouble. But my group was able to control the battle field with entangle and other spells like that and just rain death on the bandits. I do like that the module says the bandits will break and run if the PCs gain the upper hand. Every now and then it is nice to have things run from the PCs. It makes them feel good.

The meat of the bandit adventure part is in some caves. There is a Dragon Horse?s children captured by the bandits and in the caves and that hook can also be used to get the PC involved or get them to the bandits. The Dragon Horse can help the PCs latter in the adventure though my PCs did not need that aid. There are some nasty fights in the caves if one is not careful. There is a thesselgorgon that really confused my group as they had no idea what it was. That is one of the things I like about the Necromancer modules. They have plenty of monsters the PCs will not know about and it helps to even make a high level party feel a bit worried and off their game. There is a roper some great green slime traps and other nastiness in here the Bandits have befriended. They have a high level Ranger so it becomes plausible to have these seemingly random assortments of creatures in there. The leader is a particularly tough Ogre Magi with class levels that really can make the final fight deadly. There does seem to be a good amount of treasure especially magical arms and armor the bandits are equipped with.

The party then should have a few days to recoup and possible prepare for the arrival of the Castle. There is a bit of role playing with the town, the Dragon Horses, the ghost elf wizard if the PCs want to. Nothing is specifically spelled out in the module but the foundation is laid in the earlier parts for a DM to do so.

The castle appears on the ruins and it is like a great diamond. It is now made entirely of crystal and the landscape around the castle is slowly being turned into this crystal stuff. The module seems to think most PCs will wait a few days and has actions that the demons in the castle will be taking. I do not see any good advantage for the PCs to wait and my own PCs were ready to go as soon as the thing appeared. Crossing over the crystal does have a risk of the PCs turning into crystal petrifaction. A few bad fort saves and if the PCs are not ready to deal with it could be problematic. Anyone that fails the save also has a chance to be turned into a Crystal like creature. There is a template that would be added and the character would still be playable. We had it happen to one of the PCs dog. The template is not too bad except for the speed gets reduced to ten feet. That can really be a problem and is a bigger concern then the Dex loss. The character though will get stronger, get a natural armor bonus, and might gain some spell like abilities. I did feel the template with a LA of +2 was a little tough for character to find them inheriting with out much choice. I would have liked to have seen some ways once the adventure was over for the PCs to get rid of the template.

I really like the set up of the Crystal and the history of this castle getting trapped on the elemental plan of Crystal and now coming back to reform the world. Inside the castle though just lost some of that feel and was a little too much of a dungeon crawl. There are some tough and interesting encounters. They have some good light based encounters I would have liked to have seen more of. There is an error with two rooms labeled nineteen in the descriptions in the PDF that can be a little confusing if the DM does not catch it before hand.

It is not all a kill or be killed adventure though as the main goal is to stop this place of making crystal of everything. To do that some specific crystals must be destroyed and a room that is not on this plane of existence must be found. I liked that as a solution to this problem and would have liked to seen a little more problem solving along those lines.

The Diamond Fortress is a creative module that will change players. Like many Necromancer modules it can be a bit on the deadly side and has a very well thought out back story. But the adventure itself could be a bit more polished in some areas an d I like stat blocks with the encounters so I do not have to flip to different sections of the book for one encounter. It was nicer to have it as a PDF for that reason though.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Highly creative<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: A number issue in the module, stat blocks not with encounters<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Spycraft is the game of modern spies and espionage. It takes the best of the d20 system and adds on rules for easy ways to equip characters with all the latest gadgets and has a great system of feats that give cool abilities. I have always preferred it to d20 modern so when I first got some of the PDFs I was excited to see what was being done with the game. I will admit for not being all that excited for seeing d20 modern classes done in the Spycraft style.

Back to Basics is a PDF by Crafty Games who now hold the Spycraft license. The twenty page PDF is written by Alex Flagg. The PDF comes in two versions. The main version is in full color and has nice art and looks very similar to the Spycraft book. The second one is a basic black and white PDF that has no art but will be really easy to print and use that way. What I like about the second one is the classes each take up one page so that a DM can just print out what a player needs and have it all there for them to easily reference. The main PDF is book marked though a book mark to each knack would have been helpful.

The basic classes of d20 Modern are all presented here. There is one that matches each attribute. For Spycraft they have been lengthened to twenty levels and they get an ability each level to match up with the Spycraft classes. Each class gets Knacks which are very much like d20 Modern?s Talent Trees. There are plenty of knacks presented in the book some of them for only one class and some of them that can be taken by multiple classes. The classes do a good job of being less of an arch type then the classes of Spycraft so someone can be the type of character they want to be without getting locked into what the class defines them as.

The book does a good job with the classes but one area I think it does not do that well in is with mixing the classes. It does have a little sidebar that talks about using the classes side by side and how the normal Spycraft classes will be a little stronger then the d20 Modern versions. But I also wanted to see suggests or ways to mix the character classes together through multi classing and any problems that might present. Also the same with prestige classes of Spycraft. I think this was a pretty big over sight as it is something players will want to do and DMs might be a little confused by the lack of anything on it.

For players and DMs of Spycraft this PDF will be a good addition for those that want a little more flexibility in the classes and less definition in what they are. It will also be beneficial for d20 Modern players that want to try Spycraft but really like the d20 modern classes.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Blue Chrome

<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Blackguards Revenge

<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: A well thought out adventure with interesting encounters and plot<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I wanted more on the undead army<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>