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This excelent book has a procedural framework of generating interesting combat maps. Beware this is not meant for both "improv" and preparation phase of a game, although you have to practice a lot if you want to use it in impro stage, or print conveniently all needed tables. It can take some time to follow the procedure and generate the outcome. The procedure generates "Zones" (that actually fit perfectly the concept of Zones in FATE RPG) in which the user makes sure that the area has something interesting going on (without overdoing it). It is setting agnostic and generic, as it mentions categories of complications and events, not specifically tied to fantasy or sci fi. It is a good reminder of generating interesting places to battle, explore or investigate!
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This is very good for the buck! 48 possible values generator, a weapon, cyberware and some descriptive trait with a particular role. It is cool not only for NPCs in general. However "encounters" could be misleading, note this is specifically meant for an "enemy". The 6d8 seems unecessarily complicated though.
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The 5 stars begin with the fact of this being a Pay what you want thing! Following that, the quality is awesome. You generate a combination of features for artifacts, and not only you get a fluff word but also a description that can evoke meaning to the results you get. Presentation and format is clean and concise. Could be a bit more compressed as it seems a bit that there's too much space.
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Anything Pay what you want should be given 5 stars by default. However to stick with the quality, it is good but it relies on evocative words and whatever it triggers to the GM. Expect things like "Planet - Paradise" or "Speed - Slowed" but nothing else than just that word. Accomplishes its task though.
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This is interesting. Drawing a random word can inspire cool ideas. A flower name, the name of a historic figure, random anecdotes. The price may be a bit steep for the production value it has, but it can be fun if combined with the bundle.
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Huge amount of value, creativity and inspiration. Creatures come with high quality artwork, and are overall very unique and non-standard. Even though strongly FATE oriented, I can see anyone from any RPG taking wonderful ideas from here.
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Way too generic, with nothing surprising going on, no twists or exciting characters at all. I could not find much value on this one. Good presentation like always though.
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I love the idea of having rumors that can be either truth or false, and how this develops! These are awesome concept designs of potential plot hooks or sidequests. Good value!
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Great value, presentation and artwork. The villains structure of having quotes, description and history can serve as a good example for building own NPCs! Backstories are unique and als come with weaknesses or dangerous situations if players let their plans develop.
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Good presentation and artwork, but the items are hardly unusual for a fantasy game (i.e. a cloak of protection or magic bags)! The value lies on the narrative of their descriptions.
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Unlike other Dozen book series, this one is the least recommended from my point of view. Some downsides:
- Has very little to none narrative that inspires creativity and the "objects" (not spell components) are very generic and common (i.e. a torch)
- It attempts to be system agnostic but it is strongly D&D
- Out of 5 paragraphs in average for each idea, 4 of them is meant to be rule-mechanics, only one parragraph is narrative
- I was expecting Spell Components, but this is not about components, it is about mechanical effects for crafting items?
Overall the focus is a bit blurry on this one, as it tries to go agnostic and mechanichs loose yet most of it is concrete percentage amounts or 1d6+1 durations or 2d6s damages. It should either decide to be a mechanichs book or a fluff book, but not both, imho! as it achieves none.
Artwork and presentation are amazing like usual.
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49 Beautiful pages of fast-paced table-based creature creation. With short descriptions and explanation of each of the features, you get to build well-detailed lifeform. The level of detail can be fine grained from size, age and intelligence level, down to temperature tolerance, senses, smell and favored terrain.
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Definitely to be combined with Instant Universe, it follows the same formatting and scientific pattern. Huge amount of tables, definitions, descriptions and vocabulary to create different forms of life, that follow different times of evolution and development, intelligence and physical composition. It is not a set of random tables for improvisation or easy go, but rather a framework for preparing actual life beings for your campaign or adventure.
Equally the same as Instant Universe, it also repeats the same weird formatting style. Some tables here, and some tabulated text without a table form, very tricky to read with nested indentation, as if it was Python or some programming language. It is a bit of a waste to have such amount of quality work and research, deployed in a such unformatted content, without colors, tables, separator lines or even text alignment. In desperate need of editorial help.
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This was unexpected. If you are looking for a feasible solar system creation, with appropriate wording and classification, then this is really cool. It uses scientific numerical notation and classification, which may server well for hard-scifi or realistic The Expanse like fiction. Concepts are mostly explained, although not their notation or the meaning of the possible values that you can get from the tables, i.e. you can get the volatile state of orbital bodies with their exact composition and numerically valued temperature zone based on the sensor observation.
I give this 4 stars because value is very high, but the formatting is very chaotic, sometimes you see tables with proper table forms, and other times you see just tabulated text in between two paragraphs.
Recommended if you are looking to create detailed scientific-backed bodies in a galaxy.
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Pay what you want 47 backstories for Characters! It is mainly focused to help players create characters, but I don't see any problem for GMs to use it to develop backstories for NPCs too. Most of them are not concrete, but rather abstract and vague, mostly to trigger inspiration (i.e. it says your parents mysteriously dissappeared but doesn't tell why or how)
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