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100 Fantasy Biomes 4
Publisher: Fishwife Games
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/24/2021 09:32:10

It's hard to find anything new to say about this product that I didn't put in my review of the first entry in the series... https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product_reviews_info.php?&reviews_id=606888&products_id=362327

This brings the total number of locations in this series up to 400. I'm combining them all into a single table in Inspiration Pad Pro, but tweaking and mangling the results as a creativity kick start rather than reading the result straight, as described in the above review.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
100 Fantasy Biomes 4
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Creator Reply:
Thanks for the review!
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100 Fantasy Biomes 3
Publisher: Fishwife Games
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/24/2021 09:21:38

It's hard to find anything new to say about this product that I didn't put in my review of the first entry in the series... https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product_reviews_info.php?&reviews_id=606888&products_id=362327

Even more of the same, adding another hundred entries of location names and key features. Most useful as a spur to creativity if the DM deconstructs and twists the results rather than taking the result literally and exactly. See the above link for details.

I'm combining the entries in this series into a single table using Inspiration Pad Pro, the same as I did with the Sci-Fi Biomes series.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
100 Fantasy Biomes 3
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Creator Reply:
Thanks for the review and I fully agree- anything and everything in the lists is up for change as needed. One of the obstacles with system generic is that sometimes, despite how generic you try to make it (without slipping into boring) there will be some things that are not fully compatible with every setting.
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100 Fantasy Biomes 2
Publisher: Fishwife Games
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/24/2021 09:17:39

It's hard to find anything new to say about this product that I didn't put in my review of the first entry in the series... https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product_reviews_info.php?&reviews_id=606888&products_id=362327

Suffice to say this is more of the same and adds another hundred entries of location names and key features. Most useful as a spur to creativity if the DM deconstructs and twists the results rather than taking the result literally and exactly. See the above link for details.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
100 Fantasy Biomes 2
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Creator Reply:
Thanks for the review!
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100 Fantasy Biomes
Publisher: Fishwife Games
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/29/2021 18:07:15

There's only so much you can say about a product like this. It's essentially just a list of 100 location names with a little bit of elaborating detail suitable for a fantasy or sword and sorcery setting. The names are a good mix of semi-random gobbledigook (Ghenuhi, Spukara) and compounds of English words (Gatesteed, Marshflint) and all are pronounceable although some are easier than others. The location details are all thematically appropriate to the location name, so you get mines in mountains instead of shipwrecks, which tells me these lists are curated rather than just completely randomly generated. The overall feel of the locations is very old-school sword and sorcery. There are several ways to use these tables, either in play or during adventure design. If you're starting with a completely blank slate, doing worldbuilding or adventure design with no existing setting in place, you can use them straight. Where has the evil Liche-King taken the kidnapped Prince? Why to the (roll) old abandoned Dwarven Vault in the Gatesteed Cliffs, of course. If you're trying to flesh out an existing map or setting, where not every result on the table will be appropriate, you can deconstruct the location result and use bits as you need them. If you're looking to name a river, it becomes the Gatesteed River, a hill becomes Gatesteed Hill (or Gatesteed Rise, or Gatesteed Tor etc etc). Conversely you can just use the detail bit to inspire adventures in existing locations. What's special about the Ironwood hills? Why it's (roll) an abode of an exiled vampire count. Finally you can use the table result as a jumping off point for a free association naming. For example if I'm looking to name a river and get "5 Bleeding Forest of Valknad (abode of an exiled vampire count)" and none of those elements feel suitable, I can pick out a couple of key words, swap them for synonyms, mangle them around and end up with something like Redcastle Brook.
Like any random table product, this is best used as inspiration for a GM's creativity rather than a hard and fast roll=result approach. The names and details in this product are nice and evocative and lend themself to this sort of inspirational trickery. The Alien Biomes series has become an invaluable part of my Sci-Fi/space opera GM toolkit and the Fantasy Biomes series has the potential to do the same for my D&D game.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
100 Fantasy Biomes
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Creator Reply:
Thank you so much for the kind and lengthy review! I totally agree with and support the changing of details (notably the geographic feature/biome) as needed. As you noted, the names are a combination of different styles. Some folks prefer truly exotic sounding names while others prefer the compound types (aka Tavernlight, Gatesteed, Miserhaven, etc.). I've also decided to do a combination of naming elements to where most are name first and geographic type second (aka Bluefire Mountains) while others have the geographic feature first and then of named area (aka Valley of Drenmyre). Some of these I've also included a descriptive to the name (aka "Most Dreaded Valley of Drenmyre"- no, this isn't a place... yet). I also made it a point to make various types of points of interest throughout the list... some are brief and/or an indicator of a local resource (aka sapphire deposits) while others may be a sub location or encounter (aka city of Drunhan, lost stronghold of a lich king, wandering centaurs, etc.). I must admit that I've been surprised over the response I've received towards this series so far since yesterday afternoon. This first product was off to a slow start but I'm steadily getting orders for it and the second of the series. While I doubt that there will be as many as the Alien Biomes (the sci-fi older sister to this) I can say that there will likely be more than I originally anticipated for Fantasy Biomes. (and there might eventually be a snot nosed little brother product line that focuses on Mutant Wasteland map locations) PS- I love the fact that you are making good use of the Alien Biomes series. Please let me know if there are other areas of sci-fi/space opera type gaming that I need to be exploring. I never, ever intended to make as many of those as I did but they just keep selling (and honestly, as a publisher, that tells me to keep making them)... hopefully the same will continue with this series.
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Pathfinder Technical Manual - For Starships & Spacemen 2E
Publisher: Luminous Design
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/22/2018 11:03:55

A nice Frigate sized ship for Starships & Spacemen 2E. Visually it fits in well with the "pseudo-Trek" aesthetic of S&S, with the obligatory saucer hull + nacelles configuration. It's noticeably more squat looking though than most Not-Trek ships.

The deck plans supplied as PNGs are black & white, bare wall outlines, which was a little disappointing, but the main PDFcontained full-colour deckplans populated with furniture, which are easily extracted. The plan style is colourful and functional, (think classic Star Frontiers deck plans) rather than photo-realistic. This ship was clearly built with Luminious's Starship Construction Manual in mind, as it describes systems from that and lists the crew complement for the "cinematic" (i.e. realistic) crew level (which in the SCM is 10x the traditional S&S crew), and the floorplans reflect this number. There are three variants listed, which if the in-service dates translated to Trek-eras would roughly equate to one TOS-era, one movie-era refit and one late-movie-era refit. The ship stat block lists the baseline S&S ship stats, description of non-standard equipment (like the Mk-III's extensive automation) is left to the fluff text description. I can see why LD did this (to make it accessible to people who don't have the SCM) but it would have been nice to see the full SCM design spelled out (though it's easy enough to reverse-engineer).

Major gripes? I really don't like the layout of the command deck, which wastes an awful lot of space in the interest of symmetry. The bulk of the space on this deck is taken up by two corridors running around the outside of the saucer from the turbolift at the back to the bridge at the front. The only access to the bridge itself being through one of two very tiny conference rooms that flank it on either side. I'd want to modify this to make better use of space, make the bridge more defensible (only one entrance) and make the conference room a usable size, big enough at least for a table that all the command crew could sit around.

As for how usable this is outside of the not-Trek S&S2E game? Well the nacelles that give the ship the essential "Trek-ness" aren't on the deckplans, so this works fine as a generic sci-fi saucer-shaped ship. It would work fine as a small scout-ship for Star Trek Adventures (although you'll need to come up with your own ship stats), just don't expect the level of art you get in deckplan products from the likes of 0-hr or Heroic Maps.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Pathfinder Technical Manual - For Starships & Spacemen 2E
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Creator Reply:
Hi Chris, Thank you very much for this great review. We are very happy to see thorough reviews like yours because they help us decide directions for future products. Did you see that the full color PNG files for the Deck Plans were included in the download file? If not please let me know because I did upload those and they should have been accessible to customers purchasing this product. Thanks for your feed back on the Mark-III write up, I try not to over detail the descriptions to leave a little room for the customer to interpret the material to fit into their own game style. The Hyperdrive field generators (nacelles) were not included in the maps because they are not crew accessible other than the service tube in the crows nest. A large portion of Deck #1 is occupied by computer core and the machinery/technology access surrounding it. It is pretty compact on Deck #1 and Deck #5. It certainly is not TNG Enterprise D big in there and again I tried to remain just enough off-brand as to remain generic. Thanks again for the feedback it is appreciated and valuable. Please let me know if those full color maps are present so I can address the site if they are not.
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Ashdown: 100 Worlds For Starships & Spacemen 2E
Publisher: Luminous Design
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/11/2018 11:38:28

Honestly I found myself very very disappointed with this product, but to be fair it is exactly what the description says - one hundred planets, divided between 16 star systems. The only information you get about each world is the name, planet type and the type of the star it orbits. No descriptions or useful information beyond that. One of the star systems is our solar system, which accounts for 11 of the 100 worlds. Yes, not only does this include the semi-mythical Nibiru, but also still recognises Pluto as a planet (raises fist in unity with my Plutonian brothers - we will rise again from the tyrranny of deGrasse-Tyson!) There are other problems with some of the "real" star systems too.

On the plus side, the presentation and layout is very nice, very slick looking. Artwork is mainly generic CGI space art, nothing obviously specific to the worlds described but nicely done. The overall design is polished and it's an attractive looking product. I wouldn't be averse to looking at future products by this creator on that basis alone. But the bottom line is I feel there just isn't enough content here to justify the price. Sorry guys, but this sort of product relies on giving the gamesmaster something evocative and inspirational, which just telling us Viden Prime is a class H planet just doesn't do. Give us a line or two of blurb about each world (or at the very least each system) and tell us what makes it special.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
Ashdown: 100 Worlds For Starships & Spacemen 2E
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Creator Reply:
Greetings Chris J, Thank you very much for your purchase and interest in my product. I appreciate your honest feedback and both your kind words as well as the constructive criticisms.
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An updated version of the product will be available in the near future which should address some of the concerns you had on this initial release. Since you have already purchased the product you should receive a notice and be able to download the updated files.
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Updated and Expanded version now available with more specific content.
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100 Fictional Band Names Part II
Publisher: Pink Dice Bag Publishing
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/10/2018 11:23:55

I'm convinced at this point that PDB have some sort of cross-dimensional viewer that's just pulling the current Billboard Hot 100 chart over from a parallel universe. I swear when I look at some of these names I can see the album covers...

Another great list of plausible, evocative band names, covering as the blurb says a wider range of musical styles. As someone running a campaign set in a fictional Caribbean island nation, I'm delighted to see several names suitable for either latin or reggae/dance hall acts. Gabriel y Los Tigres will definitely be playing my PCs' home town.

The Celtic folk/rock crowd are well represented, as are American bluegrass. Banjos, banjos as far as the eye can see...

There are names that suggest jazz, motown, EDM, metal, everything from the indie-guitar stylings of Beauty Shop Girls (they're all guys, by the way) to the smooth crooning of soul legend Hudson Bank (though personally I prefer his older Motown-era stuff when he was lead singer with The Cruisers). And I won't lie, number 56 made me giggle.

This, and the first list, are admittedly very niche products that won't get a ton of use in 99% of RPG games. But if you run modern or SF games, they're well done and the price is cheap enough that they're worth tucking away at the back of your binder ready for that one time you need inspiration for the name of the band playing at the bar the PCs just entered.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
100 Fictional Band Names Part II
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100 Fictional Band Names
Publisher: Pink Dice Bag Publishing
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/09/2018 17:29:17

A brilliant set of names here. Instead of chopping and swapping real-world band names as I've seen similar lists do, these are all original names, most of which strongly evoke ideas for the type of music they play. So B-lieve is clearly a bubblegum pop band, while Biowarrior must be hardcore death metal, while the Mossy Oak Boys sing guitar ballads about beer, trucks and good-old-boys (Or they might all possibly just be J-Pop bands, who knows?). Not many of these names really lend themselves to "music of black origin" i.e. rap or modern R&B, but that probably deserves a list all of its own (hint, hint Pink Dice Bag folks!)



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
100 Fictional Band Names
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Creator Reply:
Hey Chris, We definitely (happily!) got your hint and have made a second list of band names! With this second list we focused on expanding the musical styles represented to include jazz, R&B, rap, blues, even surf rock, Celtic, and big band. We'd love to send you a complimentary copy as a thank-you for the idea! Please email us at thepinkdicebag@gmail.com or use the contact form on our website so we can get everything set up. Thank you, Rowan
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100 Town and City Names
Publisher: Pink Dice Bag Publishing
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/09/2018 17:11:44

A really nice selection of names. Despite the title "Town and City Names", they're really best suited as names for your archetypal American "small town you've never heard of", or maybe for towns in the Australian outback. Some of them would work OK for British town or village names but many of them wouldn't, having linguistic roots that you just don't get in genuine British placenames. Though amusingly nestled among all the artificially constructed names, #5 on the table, Bradford, just happens to be the name of a major UK city. Recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
100 Town and City Names
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Tropicana: Gorillaconda
Publisher: GRAmel
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/30/2017 13:52:49

I recently ran Gorillaconda for the players in my own Carribbean island paradise campaign. It's not the San Jose of Tropicana's setting, but similar enough in tone and details that it fit perfectly. I'd say this scenario is easily adaptable to most modern-day settings. There's just one slightly pulpy element that might not fit with totally realistic games, but this can be easily cut out without harming the overall plot. The scenario is well written and has a simple but clever mystery plot behind it. It has a nice variety of challenge scenes, most of them not combat related.

The biggest problem is the PDF is so brief, it's really only the bare bones of a scenario outline.It doesn't go into the gritty details that you need to run a fully fleshed out session. For example, the bulk of the action takes place on a movie shoot. In real life, even small low budget film shoots have dozens of people doing various jobs, and in an RPG you're going to need plenty of NPCs for players to talk to, have suspicions about and make the setting seem real. Gorillaconda has 5 named NPCs... two of them are the villains, one of them is a victim and the other two are monkeys. Also there's no real discussion of what the players can do pro-actively, clues that can lead them to uncover what's going on. A GM running this should expect to do a bit of prep work fleshing things out in advance, or otherwise do an awful lot of improvising details during play.

When I ran this I pre-generated about a half dozen NPCs to populate the film crew - just names, descriptions and personalities. A couple of them had behaviours that made them possible suspects to distract the players from the real villains. I also broke down the various beats of the plot and worked out contingencies for player actions. It was enough to bring the adventure to life and keep the players engaged, and with a little bit of pace shifting in response to player actions the scenario ran its course successfully.

If you're looking for a fully detailed scenario ready to run straight from the book then you may well be disappointed with Gorillaconda. However if you look at it as an extended scenario seed to be fleshed out with your own details, it's a fun and original piece that would make an excellent one shot. There's lots of scope to adjust the tone depending on what you're after - dial up the absurdist elements for a light hearted romp, or dial up the strange and dangerous stuff for a more suspenseful/horror game.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Tropicana: Gorillaconda
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Mission: Mercy
Publisher: paNik productions
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/31/2017 06:06:41

This is a great little scenario pack that gives you a ton of material for your money.

The scenario is set in modern day Columbia, though with a little work it could be adapted to any developing world country with remote communities. As written, two of the protagonists are described as mutants from the publisher's "REACT" campaign setting, but this is absolutely not essential to the plot and this scenario could easily be used in an entirely "real world" game with no weird or supernatural elements. There is a section on South American superstition and folklore if you want to incorporate these elements, but as the text states, NPC's belief in these things can still impact the adventure even if they don't objectively exist in the setting.

The main thrust of the adventure is the journey by road to a remote location and the delivery of the vaccine to the affected people. It's presented in a fairly freeform manner, with a number of obstacles and events the GM can throw at the players, rather than having a rigid plot or timeline. This is a big plus in my opinion, since over-plotted scenarios always seem to fall foul of player characters and their pesky free will. There are plenty of options for how the PCs can deal with events, and enough information for the GM to improvise should they do something unexpected.

The maps are well done, presented both in PD for printing and as VTT-friendly image files. In addition to trifold paper minis for all the likely protagonists, the set includes larger character "stand-ups" for the major NPCs, with their portrait on the front and their game stats on the back - a really nice touch to help players visualise the characters they're interacting with. Personally I'm not a big fan of the digital painting style used for most of the illustrations, but that's purely a personal preference - they're competently done and on the whole illustrate the adventure well rather than being just vaguely appropriate stock art.

Speaking of game stats, the adventure seems primarily written for Savage Worlds, with a seperate "Polysystem" PDF with the full main text and system-specific info for the four other supported game systems accessible by layers. This is really well done, with certain passages in the main text highlighted and linked to sidebars with game-specific content. Some real thought seems to have gone into the adaptation to the other systems as well, rather than just being a find-and-replace job.

On the whole I'm really pleased with this adventure, and will definitely be looking forward to seeing more from this publisher. My only gripe is that I can't easily use this adventure in my current ongoing Latin American RPG campaign -The PCs run a helicopter charter company and an hour-long flight would neatly bypass the whole "road trip" part of the adventure.

TL:DR - Lots of stuff included, well put together and presented, easily adaptable to other modern-day RPG settings. Highly recommended.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Mission: Mercy
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Creator Reply:
Thank You, Chris. You hit on just about everything we do to try to make a great title... and yes the multi systems are actually playtested (SHOCK!). Thanks for your assessment and highlights of what we do.
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Science Fiction Codex of Lists (2nd Edition)
Publisher: JEN Games
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/14/2017 16:03:51

If you're the sort of GM who likes and uses random lists and tables in your games, and if you're running SciFi, then this product is a treasure trove. Holy crap, you get a ton of stuff for your money! Nearly 90 different list/tables of various sizes covering a wide array of subjects. When you consider that your typical random table PDF product sells for between 50c and $1 for a typical d66 table, that represents tremendous value. Some are going to be more useful than others depending on the specifics of the game you're running, but I think there's enough in here for most GM's to get their money's worth. Personally I would have liked to see the lists laid out more like traditional tables, with the dice roll numbers first. but since I'm likely to be importing these and using them in Inspiration Pad Pro, it's not a dealbreaker for me. Of particular note are the planetary generation tables, which cover all the usual details, including a D100 list of Planetary Options that looks like an excellent supplement to the World Tags in Stars Without Number. If you're the sort of GM who prefers to carefully plan out every detail of the worlds your PCs visit, you might still find looking over these lists useful as inspiration, but if you're a seat-of-the-pants improvising GM running a sandbox like SWN or running a solo game, then adding this to your toolbox is a no-brainer.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Science Fiction Codex of Lists (2nd Edition)
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Battlesystem Miniatures Rules (2e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/11/2016 14:17:20

At the risk of repeating what everyone else has said, this product is excellent. The page quality is so crisp and sharp it looks like it's been generated from the original DTP files rather than scanned like most ex TSR PDFs. The game is an eminently playable fantasy wargame designed to mesh easily with 2nd edition AD&D, but it plays perfectly well on its own merit and should be easy to adapt to 3rd edition+. I used to use this for semi-historical games of Aztecs vs Conquistadors which the basic rules handled fine.

If the rulesystem has a drawback it's that it's a buckets-o-dice system that uses most of the polyhedral dice types, so you may find yourself having to buy a bigger dice bag.

I've been eagerly waiting for this game to emerge from the Wizards' vaults, and can highly recommend it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Battlesystem Miniatures Rules (2e)
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Wargaming Objective Cards
Publisher: Art of War Games
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/08/2015 11:29:05

This is a very poor product. What you get is just the text you see in the sample file, arranged nine "cards" to a page. There are no graphics at all, not even any card backs. There are no instructions on how you are supposed to use these cards. Worst of all there are no cutting guide marks to show where to cut to turn a page into nine cards, so you can look forward to a lot of measuring and estimating and unevenly sized cards.

There are some good ideas on some of these objective cards, but some I'm not so sure have been playtested for balance.

This isn't the most expensive product, but if you're going to sell something describing it as a deck of cards, a buyer is going to expect a certain minimum of features - cutting marks and card backs as an absolute minimum. What you've got here is just a list of ideas for objective cards, not in any usable form. With the amount of work I'm going to have to put in to turn this into an actual usable deck of cards, I don't believe this product is worth... well anything really. If it was turned into a proper print-your-own card deck with card backs, guidelines and instructions - it might be worthwhile.

Save your money. Look at the sample file, trawl the web for other battle objective ideas, then fire up your word processor and make your own cards.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
Wargaming Objective Cards
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Creator Reply:
This is the printer friendly version of the cards i put up so people could try them out before the actual print on demand cards are available. The POD cards will be available in a week or so when I get the proofs and can green light them for sale. as for instruction print them out on cardstock and put them in card sleeves. Use them however you deem appropriate for your games. One card for 100 points for Gruntz or 500 points for 40k or whatever you want to use them for.
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Mutants & Masterminds Archetype Archive 1
Publisher: Green Ronin Publishing
by Chris J. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/06/2006 00:00:00

Ten character archetypes, distinct from those in the M&M corebook, yet still iconic in their own way. Each has their own full page charsheet & illustration, which leaves me wanting to see the original archetypes produced in the same format instead of two to a page.

The artwork varies from good to excellent.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Good clean layout, iconic archetypes usable across a range of campaign styles (from Golden to Iron Age) Good value for money.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The fact that as someone still wedded to 1st Edition, I'm only going to get limited use out of this!<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Mutants & Masterminds Archetype Archive 1
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