Keep an eye on S. Trent Lott and Ronald Smith. If they can really put out a book as good as Creature Weekly Volume 1 fifty-two times 52 times a year, they'll on the design team for D&D 4.0 before long. Buy this PDF now or miss out on the chance to say "I was reading those guys back when they were doing Creature Weekly."<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: 1) These monsters are going to make a big splash in your game. Doesn't matter what game you're playing. Classic D&D - sure, with 3.5 stats if you roll that way. A private homebrew? You'll love the section describing each monster with the most popular variant rules from Unearthed Arcana. Gamma World, d20 Modern or d20 Future? These guys' twisted minds have come up with monsters that fit beautifully into any of these settings, with notes on how to adapt the creature for each one. The Creature Weekly cross-system, cross-genre conversion idea is one of 2004's coolest innovations in OGL design.

2) The erodaemon is a provocative journey into the territory Valar pioneered with Book of Erotic Fantasy and few have dared to go since. If she were the the demo for this PDF, you'd already have bought it. The best illustration in the book, a great use of color art. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Octavirate has pushed back the frontiers of broken content. Many publishers try to discourage re-use of their monsters by designating the monster names as product identity instead of Open Game Content. As a protection scheme, this is kind of like a Kryptonite lock: your bike will still get taken, it's just that they'll leave behind the worthless lock. Broken content is lame, but lots of people do it.

The legal stance expressed in Creature Weekly Volume 1 breaks new ground by designating the name of one of their monsters as a trademark. If this is just a newbie mistake, at least it's a new and ambitious one. But if Octavirate really means what it's saying here, and if they ever get hold of enough money, it'll be like the bad old days when T$R was bullying fan sites witn an overheated legal team working overtime to prevent dilution of their trademarks.

It's nice to share, guys. The Open Game License will be good for you if you loosen up a little.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

This independent game is a unique exploration of the place where fantasy roleplaying and real-world magick interact. The author clearly has extensive knowledge of both kinds of head trips, and had the great insight that what they have in common is using imagination and will to shape a reality.

The most appealing part of The Swing is its concept and setting. If you've always wanted to play a character who was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, The Swing is perfect for you. If you've ever even heard of the OTO; if you've read the Illuminatus! trilogy, Foucault's Pendulum, or any occult texts; or if you're just looking for a rich survey of magical belief systems for a modern roleplaying game, you're likely to find quite a bit of inspiration here. The Swing's rule system isn't as compelling as its ideas, so you might wind up using it as a sourcebook for whatever modern supernatural game you prefer, and even as a sourcebook it's still a great value.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: 1- The presentation of the factions attempting to influence the Swing gives each a potentially sympathetic motive; the opponents are not simply avatars of evil, merely enlightened ones with a different but justifiable agenda 2- Evocative use & transformation of public domain art 3- Good support from the publisher: definitely get the bundle for cool additions that enhance playing the game<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: 1- "What Is Roleplaying?" sections are always awkward; the one in The Swing errs on the side of talking as if to a child, and the description that the game master (or "Sage") will play the role of "the bad guys" clashes with the idea I liked in #1 above. 2- The author mentions that players may find themselves modify the rules during or between game sessions. In a tantalizing analogy he suggests that this is itself a kind of magick: players use their WILL to shape the rules-reality of the game, just as characters use their WILL to transform the fictional-reality of their world. I was disappointed that this insight wasn't developed further: it would have been cool to see a single meta-mecanic that governed changing the rules and changing the world. 3- Flaws in spelling, grammar, and general proofreading; not more than usual for a RPG, but something I hope to see fixed in a later revision (since that's a great advantage of PDFs).<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>