It can be tough to depict a good village in a game. There are a lot of NPCs, shops, and other places they PCs might go to and preparing for everything is very hard. In the past there have been some great products that deal with the NPCs. There have been few that deal with the town though. This product gives the town, the building and some NPCs in a nice complete package.

Villages: Clayton Moor is a couple of things in one. It is a PDF and a program. The products comes in a zip file a bit over ten megs and all unzipped everything is about twelve megs. The map can be printed out and there is a nice black and white version for the players as a handout. But the bulk of this product is the interactive map that goes on the DM?s computer.

The village has a nice overview and map. Then there are over a dozen buildings that can be clicked on. The building is enlarged and a description is given. NPCs are stated up and described. The NPCs are hyperlinked and listed also together in alphabetic order. There are also printable maps of some of the places. These maps are given both in color and black and white. Also each is given as lit and unlit. Anyone familiar with UKG Publishing?s other products will recognize the style and high quality of these maps.

The product has a lot going for it but the village really should have been fully detailed. The place is not that big with only a few dozen more places on the map that would need to be described, mapped out, and detailed. The printable maps though look really good and will work well with counters and miniatures. The style is the same as their other products so those will allow people who want more to add on and expand.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

There have been a lot of creature books this past year. We have had large full colored hard bound books and smaller more focused ones. We have had books that cover creatures of a specific type or a specific environment as well as books that try to get a little bit of everything. I have seen books that cover a specific creature and books that cover a specific world. There have been books of high powered monsters and books with mostly low challenge ratings. This though is the first series of weekly monster books I have seen.

Octavirate Games is a new PDF publishing company. It seems there big works are these weekly monster books. Not that the books are big but they have released five of them at the time I am writing this. The PDF is actually not that big the zip file being a little over a meg and a half and the PDF is still under two megs. The PDF is sixteen pages of color and black and white. The text is actually a little on the small size and they might have wanted to add a few pages by increasing the size of the text a little. The art is a mix of black and white and color. There are green and blue borders as well making this a bit of an ink eater when printed. The layout looks really good except there is one page that is over half white space so it really stands out. They really need a piece of art or something there. The PDF also has no book marks.

Before I get into the creatures there is one great and very useful thing this monster books does that none others have and that is present optional rules. If one is using the wound points vitality rules they are listed for each monster. Insanity lost, massive damage threshold, defensive bonus, armor as damage reduction, honor, allegiances, and taint are all common alternative rules that are included for each creature. This makes the creatures in this book ready to be used by people using different house rules or playing d20 modern or other d20 games that use different rules. It also has alternate genres for each creature. The basic write ups are for traditional fantasy, but in this side bar it says what the creature can be in a modern game, a post apocalyptic game, or a sci fi/space opera game.

The creatures range from very interesting and creative to basically mundane. The first is the Daemon Erodaemon. The appearance is strange. It is a woman except instead of a head on her body she has the upper torso of a woman. Sort of like a centaur except a woman?s body and not a horse?s body.

Next is a Deadgem template. This template turns the creature into a crystalline race that will have either psionic or magical powers.

Then there is the platypus both regular and dire versions. Not much to say here other then of all the animals one could pick I am not sure this is one of them. Still, the write up is fine and nothing wrong with it.

The Quon Ko are a race of outsiders from a demi plane of their own. They are travelers and hunters.

Last is the Therig or robgoblins. They are from an alternate dimension and have 4 eyes are stand about seven feat tall.

The descriptions I gave are rather short as the level of detail these creatures are given is quite complete. The Therig have two digestive tracts for instance. There are few monster books that give such detailed internal descriptions. Each race is given a culture and the creatures seem easy to use and creative. Some of them are a bit on the odd side but that should appeal to many people.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Bloodlines

The best way to sum it up is it is a masterful modern mystical mystery, but that might a bit too much alliteration. I am not a big fan of modern games, I prefer my fantasy. But Bloodlines is a nice adventure. It reminds me of a X-Files episode or a good Call of Cthulhu story. It is not as deadly as normal Call of Cthulhu games can be, but it has the same atmosphere of modern horror, mystery, and paranormal activities.

Bloodlines is an adventure for d20 Modern. It comes in a pdf that arrives in a eight and a half meg zip file. Inside there are two versions of the module, the friendly print out version and the nice colorful read on screen version. The pdfs are well put together with good two column layout, nicely sectioned off sidebars, and art placed in and not detracting from the writing. The one screen version is very thoroughly book marked and also has a very complete table of contents.

The cover is a female ghost holding a finger to her mouth in the universal gesture for silence. She stands over the grave of John Blackwell, an important and corner stone NPC in the module. The art through out the book is good, but I am not a fan of this particular style. There are handouts galore in this module. If you or your DM is a fan of player handouts, and I am such a DM, this module has them. There are almost thirty pages of player handouts and DM maps.

The pdf is written by Preston P DuBose. It is put out by a company called 12 to Midnight. It is there third product. There first two are Last Rites of the Black Guard, a Nazi supernatural adventure in the modern day, and Weekend Warriors, a military zombie fest adventure. The company?s tag line is ?Tell yourself it?s just a game?. They seem to have a good knack for modern horror and I hope to see more from them.

Okay, on to the good stuff of this module. This is a mystery and investigation module, not a fighting one. I think it is also a tough module. Players will have to think to get through it and understand what is going on. Some of the NPCs seem a bit obvious, but that is not a bad thing. It is a bit railroaded as a module and Preston, the author, says this upfront and makes no apologies for it. He says a good DM can stay on his toes and make the PCs not realize they are being led, but I am not sure how easily that would be. It is a good module for Role Playing and thinking. I like that but it might be a bit too linear for some people?s tastes.

The module is for fifth level characters. However, while it is for d20 modern it does not have many of the strange things that are presented in that book. For instance it assumes or seems to that the players are going to be all human. It assumes that the world the players play in is very similar to our own. Not every campaign that uses d20 modern will live up to those parts. It would be easy to allow for them, but obviously in a more magical world the mystery and supernatural effects here will seem less scary and puzzling.

The module can also work well for Spycraft, Call of Cthulhu, or other modern game. The meat of the module is the mystery and while it would take a little work there is no reason this cannot work for other modern games. Now, a Mutants and Mastermind game might actually need a lot of work, but for some lower powered superheroes and a clever DM; this could be a really fun and different adventure. It can even work for non d20 games although it would take a little more work for that.

Bloodlines will offer a good mystery and investigation for any modern game. It is a bit linear and that may be a problem for some people, but it does work well here. The module doe not seem to deadly and does leave a nice opening for a creative DM to have fun with.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Sometimes it feels like I have reviewed a book before. But rarely is it this true. In fact I have in one way of looking at it reviewed this book twice before. The first time was when it was just the Book of Templates and then the second time when it became the Book of Templates Deluxe. Now it is the Book of Templates Deluxe 3.5 Edition and with each change it has gotten a great improvement and been one of the most used books at my gaming table. It is really cool to see such a great book finally come out in print as well as PDF like the first two were. Silverthorne Games and Goodman games should be very proud of this book and it has to be rare if not unique for a non core gaming book to get three releases with two significant improvements over the original which was a very solid and useful book in its own right.

Book of Templates 3.5 Deluxe Edition is a great looking hardbound book. It is one hundred and ninety two pages long and all black and white. The layout is well done with many table for the templates and also rules for helping the DM improve monsters. The pictures are nicely done depicting some strange new creatures to show some of the example creatures created with the templates in here.

The book is very well organized with templates grouped with who they can be used for. If one needs a template for an undead there is a chapter filled with undead templates. The same goes for plants, animals, constructs, and other creature types. There is also one large chapter on templates that can pretty much be applied to any creature. Some of the chapters only have a single template like the plant chapter but all templates do have an example creature making this book partially a very different monster manual.

The book starts off strong with a chapter on applying the templates and modifying the creatures. The book is useless if people do not understand how to use the material and the book does a nice job of taking a person through the steps and considerations when doing so. There are tables for the different creature types, how to handle size increases and decreases, ways that challenge rating can be modified, working with level adjustments for players, and other key things that people will need.

The book is filled with interesting templates as one might imagine. One of the interesting ones is the Fallen. It is a template to be applied to Outsiders, more specifically good Outsiders that have well fallen to the evil side of things. There is the Degenerate Template that represents a creature in isolation or part diet that weakens a bit but becomes more unpredictable of its kind. There is the Metalvore template that represents a creature that eats metals much to the fear of fighters and clerics everywhere. I really like the example creature they use applying this template to a bulette. I also really like the picture of this thing as well. There are pages and pages of interesting possibilities and cool ideas in this book.

This is a book that I and lots of other people get a lot of use of. The only comparable book is the Advanced Bestiary by Green Ronin which is another nice collection of templates. I do use the Book of Templates more though. But in reality both are very important in my quest for new and unique creatures to make my players lives more interesting and deadly. This book has a PDF and book version making it very versatile coming in the format the person will find most useful. This is a great book and about as close to a must have in the realms of fantasy d20 game books as we see.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The Book of the Righteous is a complete cosmology. This book describes everything someone would need to run these gods, churches, and religions a role playing game. The cosmology described is a new one featuring new gods, myths, churches, and legends. It is without peer in the area it covers. Deities and Demigods, The Divine and the Defeated, Gods, and other books that have been published dealing with divinity pale in comparison. The Book of the Righteous covers everything except stating out the gods.

The Book of the Righteous is 320 pages and it costs $39.95 American dollars. It is one of the larger books yet published as well as one of the more expensive. The book is packed with ideas and useful information. The text is easily readable and well spaced. This is one of the best-organized books I?ve seen. The table of contents and the index together makes referencing this book very easy. Throughout the chapters are headings for the different sections aiding one who is scanning a section for a particular topic. The art is all black and white and it aids in getting across the purpose of the chapters. Most of the pictures have captions to explain exactly what it is. As a whole this book has an amazing production value.

The book starts with an introductory chapter. While brief, it tells you exactly what you are to find in this book as well as some great advice on gods and clerics. Reading this chapter should tell you if this book is right for you.

Chapter two goes into the mythology and the cosmology of the gods. It gives myths for the creation of the world, the gods, and all the races. It is very complete. The next five chapters cover the individual gods and their churches in great detail. It starts with the god and his/her name and myths that concern him/her. It goes on with associations of the god and alignments. It details the representatives of the god, the god?s purpose, and the servants. Next it goes into the church and the church?s structure. It tells of the doctrine and gives some examples for common prayers. There are also holy days, Saints, the god?s view of the church, and the proffered weapons. It talks about holy orders, clerics, Holy Warrior Class (See below), and prestige classes. There are eighteen different churches are fully detailed. Each can easily become the central point in a campaign or be used in less active ways.

The book also has a chapter all about Evil. It lists four churches in the same amount of detail as the good churches. It also gives evil sects of the other described churches. These can easily be used by the players or can be used as a nemesis organization.

Chapter Nine: Campaigning is my favorite chapter in this book. This chapter gives specific advice on how to use all the previous information and fit it seamlessly into any world. It has an easy reference table showing how the different churches get along. It gives some ideas on where to place different holy areas. It then gives some good adventure hooks as well as campaign ideas.

The Next Chapter is about integrating this book and using its ideas into a world with gods already set up. It is relatively easy to extract many of the great ideas from this book and apply to different, yet similar gods of other pantheons.

The last chapter is Additional Rules. In here one will find a new core class, the Holy Warrior. This class is an alternate version of the Paladin. Its abilities reflect that of its god. There is one class that is highly versatile. Depending on what domains your god has determines your abilities. The chapter list some new feats that are very religion and cleric oriented. One of these feats, Domain Specialization, might be a little strong. This feat allows the spells of one Domain the cleric has access to to be cast spontaneously. There are some domains that this might be too powerful when combined with. There is a new skill, Famous, that allows a fame mechanic to be used. Then there are some new domains, new clerical spells, magical items, and creatures. All of which have a religious feel to them.

Lastly, are some appendixes that really bring another level of depth to this book. The first is a series of writing as written be a sage about the history of the gods. It is a great prop that can easily be used with the players allowing them to have information from a well-known source. The second appendix is a glossary of names and races for easy access. The third appendix can be photocopied and used as quick reference sheets.

Overall, this is a very well done book covering areas that have been untouched by many other products. This book can easily be used as a full cosmology filled with very interesting myths and gods. It can also be used to help broaden existing pantheons and adding more depth and detail to them.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Spells of Farming

<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

Silk Road

<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: It covers a topic that has been mostly ignored in the game. And it does it very well.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: THere are some editing gaffs and I would have liked additional info dealing with a more magical approach. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Slashers and serial killers are a big part of the horror movie and genre and can easily be placed into any modern game. There are plenty of movies and books that deal with these type of cold blooded killers and it was only a matter of time before someone brought them to d20 Modern. And it is just in time for Halloween.

Blood and Blades: Profilers Guide to Slashers is the latest d20 Modern book by RPOGObjects. RPGObjects is one of the companies that does not get talked about enough. They make really good books and PDF that always cover interesting topics that few other companies do. These guys have a great catalog of work and hopefully people will really take a good look at what they have been doing. From their great support of the d20 Modern line to Darwin?s World to my personal Favorite their historical fantasy books like Legends of the Dark Ages their books give the DM and the players great options for a different sort of game. This PDF is sixty five pages long and well book marked. The art is okay and the lay out is good.

The book starts off with a nice look of what slashers are and it sets the time period in the 1980?s when slasher movies were fairly popular. Moving the time period of the setting is not going to be hard and will have little effect on the mechanics aside from some equipment. One should be able to easily use this for slashers of many time periods though it is assuming one plays in modern times.

The book has victim classes for people to play. They are clich?s form the movies, the cheer leader, the jock, the nerd, the outcast, etc. The classes have some neat abilities and will allow the players to live the clich? so to speak. The classes are all small five level ones but that fits in very well with the idea that the characters are victims and probably will not be around long. But not all characters need to be so helpless as there is the Paranormal Assault Unit a government organization that tracks and hunts the slahers that kill the victims. There are two advanced classes for the organization one for hunting and the other for profiling.

There is a fine chapter on hunting the creatures. There are nice panic and horror or mechanics. There are plenty of rules for madness and insanity and while they take a nice approach to the mechanics part of it I would have liked to also see a bit of the role playing aspect of it all.

There is a nice bit of playing the slasher game even without a DM. This makes for a fun one shot for a bunch of people just looking for something different to do one night for gaming. There are variants for being an idiot or the hero and character can actually life and gain levels if the series of games are connected. The game uses a table that is percentage based so players can roll and figure out what bad things happen to them. The rules are simple and there is not a lot of space devoted to the game but it can easily be expanded on and looks like it might be a fun way to try something different.

The Field Guide has most of the possibilities for types of slashers a person could ask for. There are some advanced classes for the slashers with plenty of different and cool abilities players will not be expecting. There are ones like the Alter Ego and the Mad Genius. Then there are plenty of monster type slashers are written up with easy to use stats and descriptions.

This book offers a nice coll3ections of slashers for people to use. Many of the ideas here are familiar from popular slasher movies and the pictures are also reminiscing of that style. The book does have the advantage of being basically the only book that covers slashers. The closest I can think of is a PDF that covers serial killers specifically, but that is a write up of specific NPCs and not a how to kit like this is. The two books can really be used well together though.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Who ya goin call? Since my early days of playing Beyond the Supernatural investigating ghosts has always been a great theme for a modern game. It has been years since I have played in such a game but the memories and excitement of such a game still ring true. Blood and Spooks brings back the fun of ghost hunting.

Blood and Spooks is a new PDF by RPG Objects. It is very much like another book they have that I liked Blood and Brains, that one is about zombies. RPG Objects have had quite a few really good books like their Darwin?s World line and the Blood and books of which this is obviously one. The book is well laid out, good art, and nicely book marked. One nice option that RPG Objects has is a printer friendly version one can get from their web site.

Blood and Spooks is a great addition to Blood and Brains. I like that the books are fun and serious allowing for a lot of different play styles. The ghosts and supernatural creatures are not as dark and horrific as say Call of Cthulhu and his buddies. The tone is lighthearted at times and makes the book a good read as well as a good RPG supplement.

The book starts with a good introduction and explains the feel. So few books really do this and it is always helpful to set the stage for the reader. The book uses d20 Modern rules and lists and explains so new allegiances for the players to have. There are some new good ones like Science, Wealth, and even Sex. It really opens the game up to some new possibilities there. There are new occupations as well, many of them very much in line with what the character is going to be doing. For instance there is Ghost Hunter Driver, the guy who drives the vehicle for the ghost hunters. There are also more mundane occupations like Antiques Dealer and Circus Performer. There are also backgrounds, these are ways the character become a ghost hunter. There are only eight so more would have been useful. Each gives a small benefit along with a small drawback. These are all weaker then feats and really serve more to offer the place a character came from then any truly great mechanical benefit.

What of the victims? One area that some horror based games seems to neglect is the easy creation of victims. Well, there are some simple rules using the d20 modern classes to create victims. It would have been nice to see some simple examples since creating NPCs in the d20 Modern system can take a little while with the feats, the skills, and everything else. But there are some nice simple rules for creating children and aren?t they the best victims?

The advanced classes are good in appropriateness for the setting, but are a bit like the ones presented in the D20 Modern book. Most of the ones here are pretty self explanatory like the Arcanist, the Clairvoyant, Exorcist, Ghost Hunter, and Skeptic. I like the classes but would have liked to see a little more move away from the advanced classes that have already been made. The Medium for instance is a nice psionic based class, but would have been more interesting with unique abilities. Unlike most new books there are very few new feats; only two. There is one new use for a skill. But it is a cool one: Duct Tape Engineering. It uses the Craft Mechanic skill and anything that allows one to take advantage of versatile Duct Tape is a good thing.

Ghost hunting equipment is very important and dangerous. They require a license to use and the simple rules for that is nicely covered. The equipment includes all the typical items like ghost containers of different varieties and electrons packs and many types of detectors.

There area few pages about signs of haunting and other supernatural events, employers, mystic places and odd encounters. It is a good list for them but really could have been expanded on more. The general tips for every ghost hunter are nice.

Lastly, are a large amount of new FX spells and powers, following ghosts to their own plane, and stating out the ghosts. There are even some advanced classes for ghosts that can really allow for plenty of different types of encounters with ghosts.

Blood and Spooks do a nice job of presenting ghost hunters. These are more then just the Ghostbusters, the book offers plenty of new types of characters that would investigate and be involved with ghosts. One strength of the product will be combining it with Blood and Brains for a nice mix of Zombies of Ghosts for the players to have to handle.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

The prestige class is a common component of many books. There has been a great deal of talk though on them. People find they can be hard to use and hard to incorporate in their world. Prestige classes can represent special training, insight, organizations, or just a specialization. They are versatile and that seems to cause problems with people that want them to only be one thing. This book is not about prestige classes, it is about a single prestige class. But it presents it in a way that is easier to use then most others. Its advantage is that while most classes take up a page or so this one class is five pages.

Blind Path is the first in what seems to be a series of PDFs called Liber Sodalitas. It is the first product by Highmoon Media Productions. It is a small PDF coming in at only six pages one of which is the OGL. The art is good but there is only a single picture. Layout is good and basic. There are no borders or other fancy items that will cause this to eat a lot of ink when printed. There are bookmarks.

The Blind Path is a prestige class for blind people. The class has a specific history of how it came to be and how the teachers spread the world of the teachings. The creator of the Blind Path is a woman known as Mang-Ren. She was a woman who tried to manipulate and get to a place higher then her birth would indicate and was eventually punished for it. The book gives a nice description and history of it all. The punishment included being blinded and goes into how she learned to live with it. While the class itself does make up for being blind one thing not covered is that blindness is really easy to cure in the typical D&D game being a third level cleric spell. A cleric will have access to curing the blindness before the character can qualify for this class. It would have been nice to have some alternative blindness rules that made blindness a little harder to fix.

The class itself is simple and nicely focused. It helps the blind person being able to see without sight. It offers a decent amount of skills, okay base attack bonus, and two good saves. The character gains blind sight and awareness like abilities making him hard to flank and eventually even able to detect ethereal creatures. I like that the abilities all focus on seeing without sight and not incorporating anything martial art like or magical. The class might be considered a little on the weak side as the abilities are all passive in nature, but in a lower powered game this could be a great character concept to explore.

The class and history and easy to use and should fit nicely in most campaigns. I like that the teachings come from a single person originally and have that NPC stated out and ready to be used. This is a good fully developed and described class.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Many times it is the small little detail that separates a good adventure from an average one. It can be the combat and the details in the adventure, but most of the time it is in the set up or approach to the adventure. Outside of plot these details are really one of the few things that really separate adventures from each other. As I read through many adventures they do seem to blend together.

Betrayal at Shadewood Keep is an adventure by Vanishing Goblin Inc. This is their first product. It is a PDF that comes in a sixteen meg zip file. Inside there is the main PDF with art that is over twenty two megs in size. The full color cover is a bit under five megs and the print version of the module is a bit over five megs.

The art and cartography are well done. The maps are small and easy to use. They went with a lot of small maps that map out e3ncounters instead of larger maps that show a lot of encounters together. There are maps of a full keep and town here as well. They are easy to use and simple to look at. The layout is also good making things easy to read and the modules is well organized. It has no book marks though. The table of contents is okay, but book marks would really making flipping around on a computer screen a lot easier.

The module starts out simple enough. The group of adventurers gets a job to stop attacks by giants and ettins and ogres. There is a lot of combat in this adventure but most of it seems good for a party of eighth level characters that the module is designed for. There is a bit of a mystery that the players stumble onto and the adventure takes them first into the wilderness to defeat the giants, then to an old keep, and finally to the masterminds behind the plot. The keep can actually be the first part of the adventure oif the players choose to go that way even though everything at the beginning points them in the direction of the giants.

One nice thing the writer does it discussions what the results of certain divination spells will be and why. This is a great detail as divinations spells can be some of the harder parts of DMing. With what is going on the results make perfect sense although the players will not know that until they figure everything out. And that seems to be perfect for divinations.

There are some characters presented here that are given really good detail. A DM can easily use them in different ways then presented here and with a little creativity they can stick around a little longer. The adventure should be easy to drop into any campaign. This is one of the design features that is mentioned. There are some small editing problems like one place that says see page ?? where they obviously never went back and filled in the page number. I did not see any big editing problems though. There are stat blacks for all the creatures presented here.

The module is a nice adventure that offers the players some fun with fighting and a little with problem solving. The plot slowly unfolds in front of the players to get them to continue on the adventure, but there are no serious brain teasers that will stump the party.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

This is a book that while I have not been waiting for it, I am happy to see it come out. I know the author, M Jason Parent is a big cyber punk fan and this small book defiantly fits into a cyber punk game. It is always nice to see a writer get to write something that they have been wanting to for a long time. I however was never a big fan of the cyber punk or the not so distant future RPGs.

This book is a PDF by EN Publishing. They are one of the leaders in the PDF market and the author M Jason Parent is a talented writer and has shown himself time and time again to have a good grasp on both the mechanics and the details of a game book. The PDF is a small one only being five pages long. Despite that they still have placed book marks in it. The art and layout are good and each weapon is nicely drawn up. There are some gray borders that wile looking great on the screen can eat up a bit of ink for people printing them off.

The book is about some guns. Some nicely described and well detailed guns; but just guns. There are five different ones presented here and they are versatile and seem really good. The book has these set in Progress Level 6 as shown in the d20 Future supplement for d20 Modern. The weapons fire using a chemical propellant system. I am curious if such a weapon exists or how the science behind it is. Either way the detail on how the weapons work is provided and seems to make sense as a near future weapon.

The background information is nice and with luck the company will be expanded and detailed in the future. It would also be cool to see other weapons in and expanded catalogue or cheap knock off versions of these high quality weapons.

In the end though it is a little hard for me to get excited about some new guns. As well as they are detailed and described the book lacks a little something extra. I am not sure what but hopefully in future books we will see a little more.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Sometimes I want to rename the books I am reviewing to better fit the content. This one would be called Return of Black Hammer: More Guns. Like its predecessor this book gives the reader a good amount of weapons for a near future game. They fit well in a cyber punk game as well as anything on the cusp of Progressive Levels 5 and 6 as defined in the d20 Future book.

This book is a good follow up to the first one. It is again written by M Jason Parent. EN Publishing as everyone should know by now is a leader in the PDF industry. The PDF is longer then the first coming it at around a dozen pages and has the same basic layout and look. The art of the weapons is nicely done, but the layout leaves something to be desired as there are two pages that hare just half blank. Other then that the book looks good. Like the first one it is book marked and has some gray borders that will eat a bit of ink when printed.

The book has a lot of different guns presented in it. I count about forty new weapons and three new types of ammo. The weapons are nicely described and fill out a good variety of arms from pistols to assault rifles. They are all fully stated out with a few new rules on how they interact with some of the burst rules from d20 Modern for instance.

The book makes a good addition to the weapons found in the d20 Modern and Future books. The level of detail is much greater making them a bit more interesting to use as they become more then basic weapon stat blocks.

This one I did find to be better then the first but still missing a little something. It is an enjoyable read but really did not make be excited to use anything in here although in a modern game I probably will.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

In the near future games many times the guys with the best gun seem to come out victorious. The gun has always been a fascination of gamers and the near future weapons seem to be especially popular since they represent the most powerful and cutting edge technology; even if most of it does not actually exist today. With the d20 game quickly adapting itself to each and ever genre out there is no surprise that these products are starting to real find their own niche. The New Tribes series represents EN Publishing dive into this newly forming market. Their Black Hammer series has filled the role nicely.

Black Hammer 3 is the third in the line of books about near future weapons. Each one has presented a few new and interesting weapons in the. They are all written by M Jason Parent giving them consistency in writing style. This fifteen page PDF is fully book marked, layout is good with some white space issues the whole series has, but the over all look of the books is really cool. It is like the first two well book marked.

The series has really grown since the first book. The page count on them is not high but considering there are over three dozen weapons in the book alone, one quickly sees that there is lots of information in these few pages. The weapons and technology behind them are all nicely described and they have nice information to use. These weapons are more then just stats on a page. The few pictures are of cool guns, and more pictures could be useful.

The power of the weapons seems appropriate for the time frame. The weapons are good and players will want them as they are nice upgrades from other items in d20 Modern for instance. Many of the weapons are also versatile and that just helps players to want them even more. But none of them strike me as something one would not want in one?s game. A small annoyance though is some of the items referenced here are to be described in the fourth series of the book which at this time is not out yet.

One of the great things about these books is they are actually useful in non d20 systems. While there are no conversions notes or anything like that in these books, they are detailed enough that someone familiar with d20 and another system appropriate for the weapons like Shadowrun should have no problems. The back ground material is easy to use in most cyber punk type settings and should be nice to offer something the players of the system might not be familiar with.

The Black Hammer books have really done a great job of presenting weapons in a new and interesting way. The background information is really the key for me and I really hope one day it will be expanded on so that readers can learn more about these companies. There is a lot of room to grow in the series and it does not always have to be the new and latest weapons though that does not hurt either. The series really fits well together and the more I read them all together the more I like them.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

This is one of the books that I have really been looking forward to seeing. It is rare that I see a book come out about my job; I work in a bank and have for many years. MY father was in insurance and my sister is in investments so I have a bit of real world knowledge on the subjects here though I am far from an expert. I am not expecting the book to be as complex as the modern day Banking Industry is. But I do hope that it covers a good amount of the basic sand makes reasons for them to be in the game. I am also a big fan of Guilds and using them in the game. So, this product has a lot of potential use for me.

EN Guild Banking Guild is the first in a new line of books by EN Publishing cover all sorts of guilds. EN Publishing is well known for their many PDFs and usual high quality of work. The twenty nine page PDF has two different formats one designed for print and the other for on screen viewing. The one designed for print is simple two column lay out with all the art but still really easy to print out. The on screen one is very nice to look at and really easy to read. The art is all really nice with some very interesting pictures. The book is well book marked and really has good production values all around.

The book starts with a simple introduction stating that this book is not going to accurately reproduce the modern financial situation nor is it going provide a complete financial system for a fantasy game. The book also has a few common banking terms and their meaning. It is not by any mean a complete least as bank jargon can get kind of bad at times, but it will help with a basic understanding of what is presented in this book.

The banking guild is composed of three separate areas of banking, stock exchange, and insurance. It has an expensive membership, apprenticeship option, many benefits and titles for its people. A nice side par covers the historical aspects of banking starting in Babylon and hitting a few different time periods through the centuries. The stock exchange portions can get a little complicated. There is a lot of potential money to be had as there is an example of an adventuring group that makes three hundred times their initial investment. That would of course be an ideal situation and does require luck as well as skill. The insurance section is rather interesting. There is the normal property type of insurance but that probably will not come up a lot in a normal campaign. But the life insurance polices that can include resurrections for characters very well might. This can get rather expensive as it includes having the characters body teleported back to a church and then the raise dead or other spell being cast their.

The next chapter deals with more normal rules like skills feats, and classes. The two skills of Knowledge Financing and Craft Handle Money though have a very odd use allowing their ranks to be added to other skills for specific situations. I am not a fan of that as that can really give some big bonuses even for not so high level characters. There is a feat called money shoot and despite the name it is actually pretty cool. It is the ability to use a coin to intercept an arrow or other missile weapon in flight.

There are two prestige classes in the book. The first is the Roving Accountant a caster that is good at divination and appraisals. They get a lot of appraisal abilities over the five levels of the class. They continue to get full spell casting ability and pretty good skills and skill points. The other class is called the Venture Capitalist and it is a fighter that raises money for high risk and high reward efforts. It could be taking over a village or retrieving riches from dungeons. The character usually does not care where the initial investments come from. The requirements of the class really do not fit. It requires the feat of Money shot, Improved Sunder, and Power Attack. It also needs the peaceful encounter with an evil outsider. The feats have nothing to do with the class abilities. I would have though Combat Expertise would be a better fit since it requires an intelligent score of 13 and this class seems to be a better concept for a smart fighter. Also, the evil outsider but seems odd for a class whose alignment requirement is lawful. Contacting an evil outsider for a class does not seem something a lawful good character would ever do.

The rest of the book covers a lot of different things. There are three new spells. One, Crazy Money, which causes people to spend money without control, a greater version of contingency, and passing wealth that literally makes a person pass wealth out of themselves and it is very painful process. There is a very interesting creature called the lead ooze that turns gold into lead and ruins peoples wealth and can ruin economies.

One of the nice sections deals with vault securities. This is nice and simple means that people will protect their money. I like it because it is also good ideas for protecting magic shops for people who use them. There is a table of exchange rates and new types of currency that different civilizations can use. This is very well done with some great ideas for making coins and valuables vary from place to place. There is a nice side bar here about the gold standard in the real world.

Lastly there is a small section on gods and a sample bank. The gods are not specific gods but it does talk about what gods of commerce, greed, and theft can be like. The bank is nicely described with some adventure hooks in it.

This is a nice book and it does a good job of taking a new idea that is not used in the fantasy game and presenting it in a workable way. Some of these options in here are much better for NPCs then PCs since PCs tend to want wealth now and are not into long term investing. There are all sorts of new twists, motives, and ways to use adventures in here. It can add a new level of complexity to the game dealing with characters that have to worry about exchange rates and have portions of their personal wealth tied up in investments and not able to be used. The life insurance also makes it less likely for characters to have permanent death but it works just as well for the bad guys. I really like this book and plan on getting some good use out of it.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>