It is well written campaign adventure series. But, there is one valid protest I must report for all others who contemplate investing as much as I did into this game. BUYERS, BEWARE! All, I mean ALL the maps in this campaign series are only available to open in Campaign Cartographer Pro software, which MUST BE PURCHASED SEPARATELY!!! There are no, I repeat NO DISCOUNTS or COUPONS made available by Final Redoubt corporation, at least by a reasonable amount of searching,

This necessary extra purchase for optimal play experience is not disclosed anywhere on their product description.

In its current form, you will have to make do with pictures posted in the PDFs, which of course do not pixellate well at required size.

Hence, half the rating, rounded down.

I found the setting to be very engaging and descriptive. It blends nicely the familiar of our own world, the eternal struggle of good vs. evil, and traditional fantasy elements into a cohesive whole. While it bears similarity to traditional fantasy worlds, Echoes of Heaven is also related to ancient and modern Christian roots, with inclusions of God, Angels, Heaven, and Hell. Overall, the flavor of the setting is highly imaginative and should serve to fill a much needed niche for those wishing to tell an epic story of Heaven against Hell along the lines of the movie "The Prophecy" or the comic book "Constantine."

Chapter One: Introduction This Chapter gives a very high overview of the setting, the world the characters inhabit, and the cosmology. These pages should be made available to almost all new players to the setting as it gives a quick and accurate view of the world of adventure as well as key mechanical aspects such as a calendar.

Chapter Two: Races Echoes of Heaven pulls from traditional fantasy elements that most are familiar with and adds unique elements that really tie the races to this specific setting. Each race is tied to a deadly sin (of which there are 5 instead of 7). There are subraces that are favored by the Divine and some favored by the Infernal.

One particularly nice feature is that, barring Divine or Infernal favoring, subraces all share a common set of statistics from the Player's Handbook. This makes it possible to have cosmetic differences without having ideal subraces for each class.

The only thing I found that might be an error was the statistic block on High Men - they don't seem as 'strong' as standard humans, especially compared with the High Elves. This could be easily house ruled I believe or may be adjusted in an errata. Also, some of the tables could be better labeled and referenced in the text.

Chapter Three: History This Chapter gives a detailed history of the world from creation to present day. Sprinkled throughout are Adventure Seeds and World Threads, that give a GM guidance on creating adventures that can be used to customize the setting to his needs or to advance the overall timeline. This unique addition to the book is very helpful to new GMs and those who want to know that their campaigns will not be invalidated by official sources. Throughout this chapter and the introduction are passages that detail how certain creatures in the d20 system were created and are viewed (dragons, hobgoblins, kobolds, etc.) This helps establish Echoes as a new campaign world while maintaining familiar links to engage existing d20 players.

Chapter Four: Gazetteer The different nations are detailed in this Chapter. Each geographic area is richly detailed with notes on religious overtones, economy, and major cities. Color Campaign Cartographer maps accompany each region, giving a good idea of its physical boundaries and layout. I would have liked to see a little more information on each of the major cities, but that could be something done in a supplement either by region or just a city book. Also, some further Adventure Seeds could have given a GM a kick start for starting or holding a campaign in each area.

Chapter Five: Power Groups This is probably one of the most important chapters in the book, and one usually left out by other campaign worlds too easily. This chapter details the main power groups in the setting, with a good amount of background on each. The only thing that would make this chapter better is to treat each organization as an 'affiliation' (in d20 terms) that allow the characters to be more closely tied with an organization and gain benefits and incur obligations.

Chapter Six: Religion This Chapter goes into great detail about the religion(s) of the setting. While there is one Church, there are many factions within it. There is a good deal of background material for different churches, factions, and holy beliefs. Characters will find good information here to guide their role playing, and the standard mechanics of domains and classes is included. Overall, a very thorough chapter that really hits to the heart of the Echoes setting.

Chapter Seven: Everyday Life In this Chapter, we're presented with general campaign setting material to aid the GM in creating a thriving world that comes alive. There is not much else to say, except that the world has been well thought out and includes common terminology that should make it a good fit with existing campaigns as well.

Chapter Eight: Miscellaneous This Chapter is the catch-all for other details of the world, including materials, equipment, and locations. Again, as with other chapters, Adventure Seeds and World Threads are scattered to help the GM in planning a campaign. Of particular note are bonded items. This items are specially crafted items that grow in power with the character. I've always found that those items that a character uses throughout their career are the most treasured, and Echoes of Heaven provides a systematic way to bring this out for GMs. Another aspect to this chapter that makes the setting flexible are Ulcers. Ulcers are on the surface rifts that destroy the standard laws of reality. Therefore, a GM can link in other settings, other genres, etc. into an Echoes campaign with little need to 'explain' it away. This opens up a lot of possibilities to incorporate the setting with others.

Appendix One: This is really the GM Guide for the setting and gives hints at things to come and explains portions of the other material in more detail for the GM. A large number of NPC names are given with classes and levels. However, they are not really fleshed out beyond that. I would have liked to see a few have full stat blocks. In addition, a lot of the NPCs look to be very powerful, which isn't a problem in itself, except that given the nature of the setting, it was surprising to see more than 1 or 2 level 14+ NPC's in each of the major areas. I hope that future supplements or web enhancements will detail a few of the more prominent NPCs in more detail.

Appendix Two: This discusses how Echoes relates to other settings and the base d20 system. Sections are devoted to banned classes, modifications to spellcasting, and necromancy. One thing lacking from this section and others is the addition of any new classes. While not necessary, having a few unique classes to a setting really allows players to immerse themselves. I hope that we see some classes or prestige classes specific to the setting coming with future supplements.

Index Yes! What can I say, I really hate when a sourcebook does not have an index. Echoes of Heaven has a great index.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: I particularly like the setting overall and how it blends some of our world with traditional fantasy and epic struggles of good vs. evil to create a rich , dynamic world that should engage players and GMs for quite some time. The inclusion of Adventure Seeds and World Threads are useful for GMs running campaigns as material is released. The setting has a unique take on the basic races by adding Divine and Infernal influences and offers new looks into the formation of common creatures in d20. The writing and artwork are all high quality.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The biggest missing piece to the setting is the lack of new or custom game mechanics such as classes, prestige classes, or feats. While not necessary in a new setting, they do help to frame the setting and add a bit more depth and differentiation. However, both of these can be included in future supplements and should add greatly to the overall quality of the work.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Great product. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a new campaign setting or to anyone looking for a great OGL resource to borrow stuff from.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: I really enjoy having the level of detail to read through. You can really get a good feel for how everything is related. I found that having the adventure seeds and world threads being placed in context to the campaign information was very useful. Chapter 8 was a lot of good information and I really like the bonded magic items mechanics.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I think that the product could have really benefited from the inclusion of campaign specific feats and prestige classes. Of course this "oversight" can easily be corrected in later products or as a "web enhancement" type PDF.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The Echoes of Heaven is a campaign setting from Final Redoubt Press. While the book is published under four different RPG systems, this review concerns itself purely with the d20 incarnation. The zipped file is large at just over 41 megabytes. It contains a plethora of files; including The Echoes of Heaven campaign book itself, The Throne of God adventure, as well as quite a number of Campaign Cartographer map files, and a PDF file on how to use them. Finally, it also includes a short PDF preview of the campaign setting, which is slightly odd.

The main campaign setting book has 207 pages in total. This includes a page for the front and back covers each, a page that opens the product, a page for the credits, four pages for the table of contents, five pages for the index, two pages of ads, and a page for the OGL. Likewise, the adventure included with the campaign setting is 55 pages long, with two pages for the covers, one for the opening page, one for the credits, and one for the OGL. Only the campaign setting itself has bookmarks.

Both the campaign book and the adventure have full-color front and back covers. The interior art is done in black-and-white with shades of grey. There are no page borders, but at the top of every page is a header indicating what section of the product you?re in. Neither book has a printer-friendly option, though this isn?t too bad, as the art isn?t plentiful.

The campaign book opens with a section describing several aspects of the product. It talks about their reasons for producing versions of this that use four different RPG systems, for example. It also differentiates between adventure seeds and world threads, which regularly appear as sidebars throughout the campaign setting. Whereas adventure seeds are things which the publishers never plan to expand on, thus freeing up GM?s to come up with their own ideas, world threads are dangling plot hooks that will be resolved in future products. The fact that Final Redoubt Press is giving GM?s this much advanced notice is exceptionally cool.

The first chapter gives an overview of the campaign. It?s here that we start to get an idea of just how massive the scope of this campaign world is. In the beginning, there was only Heaven, with God at the center. When one-third of the Heavenly Hosts fell to evil, the remaining angels, as well as the mortal races living in Heaven, went to war with them. After a thousand years, goodness seemed to be winning?until another third of the Heavenly Hosts became evil. With Heaven about to collapse, five mortal prophets cast a ritual to sunder Heaven, cleaving most of it away to create Hell and the mortal world. It?s now ten thousand years later, and Hell seems to be winning again.

Chapter two covers the PC races of this campaign world. The main PHB fantasy races are mostly here (save for the half-races), and for the most part they have the same stats. In addition to normal, mortal races, there are also versions of each with either the Divine Spark (blessed by angels) or Infernal Taint (corrupted by demons)

Chapter three covers the history of the mortal realm. Of the ten thousand years of history since the mortal world was sundered from heaven, a surprisingly large amount of that is given here. The picture painted is rather apocalyptic, as there are many times when the world has come very close to being destroyed or consumed by Hell completely.

Chapter four covers over forty nations on Belkanath, the continent on the mortal realm where the campaign takes place (the rest of the world remains largely unexplored). Each nation has its name, ruler, government, capital, major towns, resources/trade, population, languages, overview, church, allies, enemies, history, and world threads given.

Chapter five covers power groups; organizations with a large amount of sway. Like virtually all preceding chapters, no game stats are given for any of the eleven groups presented here.

Religion is the subject of chapter six. The five branches (one for each mortal race) of the single Church are covered; each of these worships their respective prophet who helped sunder Heaven. A single church also exists that claims to be the original religion of God as practiced in Heaven. Alongside these are other churches, many of which worship beings such as dragons, demons, or other messianic figures. Each religion gives typical classes of its worshippers, and what domains it offers.

Chapter seven covers life in the mortal realm. This short chapter is largely a primer on feudal life, culminating in a chart on population demographics.

Several miscellaneous topics make up chapter eight. It covers things like new metals, several major relics (no game stats given), and the nature of ulcers. Ulcers are what it?s called when Hell leaks into the mortal realm, trying to corrupt the world with its infernal energies.

Appendix one is an extremely detailed gazetteer of the kingdom of Ludremon. Covering its history, establishments, culture, government, resources, military, fiefdoms, church, politics, geography, and adventure seeds and world threads, this gives you everything you need to start a campaign there.

Appendix two is a brief section, being only two pages long, which covers the mechanics of the setting. It deals with things like banned classes and races, changes to spells (which is largely done as an overview, instead of changes to specific spells, and how much treasure PCs should get.

The Throne of God is the adventure that comes with the campaign setting. It is the first in a series of ten adventures forming an Echoes of Heaven campaign. In this adventure for 2nd-level characters, the PCs are actually there as Heaven is broken. As the massive energies of the spell tear them apart, they reawaken ten thousand years later in the mortal realm, just in time to help stop Hell?s latest incursion into the mortal realm. But that?s only the beginning?

The Echoes of Heaven presents an extremely rich campaign world for gaming in. The campaign world is heavily detailed, and paints a tapestry of a world crying out for heroes. The adventure does a superb job illustrating this, beginning with a bang that promises more great adventures to come. Likewise, the files for the Campaign Cartographer utility are a nice touch.

The downside is in how the campaign book is 95% flavor. GMs looking for new crunch won?t find much here at all. Even the new races are largely drawn from the PHB, and the mechanical changes are simple and over-arching. The adventure does have a few new monsters, but beyond that, there?s little in the way of mechanics that can be cherry-picked for your own campaign here. And of course, you may have a hard time printing out these books in their entirety, as there are no printer-friendly versions.

Altogether, The Echoes of Heaven is a thrilling campaign, filled with incredible evil and incredible promise for those who would be heroes. While it doesn?t offer much in the way of new crunch, the fluff here is truly awe-inspiring; this a world players will love to game in. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: This campaign setting was truly vivid in the picture it painted. It had very in-depth detail that was also very evocative. The adventure that comes with the setting is likewise very alluring, drawing you in with its epic scope.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The product is, perhaps due to being originally written for multi-system publishing, extremely light on crunch, having virtually no new mechanics. While there are a few things like a couple new monsters, new metals, etc., there's not much here to cherry-pick if you don't want to play in this campaign world. Also, it lacks a printer-friendly version.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning. For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north...Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the pit."

• Isaiah 14:12-15

Untold ages ago, angels and mortals lived side by side in the realm of heaven. Then the archangel Lareniel succumbed to the sin of pride and led 1/3 of the angels in rebellion against God. After 1,000 years of war, the forces of heaven were poised to defeat the rebels when a second rebellion sprung up, turning the loyal angels against one another.

In the ensuing chaos, heaven itself nearly fell. Five mortal prophets, one of each race, foresaw the fall of heaven undertook a great ritual to save it. They sundered the world into three: heaven, hell, and the mortal realms. Now, many ages later, the war between heaven and hell rages, the church is split into warring factions, good and evil vie for the hearts and minds of the mortal races, and the mortal realm is the great stage upon which all of history will be decided.

Echoes of Heaven is a well-written, fantastically interesting campaign setting. While downloads are available for four game systems (d20, HERO, H.A.R.P., and Rolemaster), the brunt of the book is system-neutral. The setting itself is well wrought, with a level of detail on par with Wizards of the Coast's official campaign settings.

Religion, being a major part of the setting, gets more attention than it typically receives in a d20 fantasy setting. The major churches (which are actually competing divisions of the same religion) are described along with their dogma, structure, and history. While Echoes of Heaven was obviously inspired by judaeo-christian ideas, the author has done a good job separating the fantasy churches of the mortal realm from any real world religions. There are echoes to be sure, but no more so than what already exists in standard D&D.

Other setting aspects receive a similar level of attention. The various nations of the mortal realm are described, complete with some nice looking Campaign Cartographer 3 maps. There's an interesting section of feudalism, which I thought contained just enough information to give the game a medieval feel without getting too bogged down in intricacies. Overall, Echoes of Heaven contains all the information a DM should need to run an effective campaign in the mortal realm.

One innovation that I really liked was the book's clear definition of what plot hooks will and won't be advanced in future books. That way, a DM can create his own adventures without worrying about being trumped by some future development of the setting's metaplot. I thought this was a nice idea that I'd like to see implemented in other campaign books.

While Echoes of Heaven contains the typical trappings of a fantasy setting, it uses them in clever ways. For instance, in the world's early history, a group of fiends took the form of dwarf-wives and seduced the returning dwarven warriors. The resulting union gave birth to the first giants, who then waged war against their mortal fathers. Thus was born the racial animosity between dwarves and giants. There are many other examples of common fantasy ideas applied in unique ways to the setting's history. From the cambion origins of the various evil humanoid races, to the incorporation of deadly sins into the personalities of the mortal races, there is good stuff here.

While I appreciate the non-system aspects of the book, some of the d20 aspects are vague and underdeveloped. There are no prestige classes, no spells, and no feats to speak of. In addition, several campaign details have system implications that are glossed over or difficult to find. For example, alignment-detecting magic and spells that are used to divine the true nature of creatures aren't as effective in Echoes of Heaven. The book gives some advice on dealing with this, but it doesn't ever come out and give any hard and fast rules. If detect evil doesn't actually detect evil, what does it do? There are other examples like this. The book gives lots of suggestions, buts its very light on actual rules content.

As a bonus, the download comes with an adventure and a series of Campaign Cartographer files. The inclusion of the Campaign Cartographer files allows anyone with that program to access to the setting's maps. This is a nice addition, as CC maps can be zoomed, cropped, and otherwise altered for adventure design and other purposes. The adventure, called The Throne of God, is the first in a series meant to take PCs from 2nd to 20th level over the course of a campaign. It's well-written, and it does a good job incorporating various elements of the setting into an interesting plot. DMs not planning to run the entire adventure series can probably use Throne of God as inspiration when setting the tone of his own adventures in the Echoes of Heaven Setting.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Echoes of Heaven is a campaign setting with a neat hook and a lot of detail. This book contains a level of information comparable to Wizards of the Coast's official campaign setting books, which I think is a high compliment for a small press, third party product like this one. The authors have done a fantastic job taking the idea of a war in heaven and turning it into a D&D campaign. The art is good, the layout is professional, and the writing is fairly solid. Bonuses like the CC map files and the free adventure make this a great bargain for the price.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: While Echoes of Heaven is great when it is being system-generic, it falls a bit short when its trying to be d20. There are interesting knightly orders, but no feats or prestige classes to reflect them. There are notes on changes to the magic system, but the actual work on editing and altering spells is up to the DM. I think the authors have a great setting on their hands, but the actual rules mechanics just aren't there.

If Echoes of Heaven had a simple and clear set of d20 rules to back up its detailed and inspired setting, this would be a five star product. As it stands, I'm calling it 4 1/2 stars and rounding down.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>

Two books in this download, the campaign book and an introductory adventure. Length: Campaign book: 207 pages Included adventure: 55 pages including covers, OGL, etc. The campaign book is bookmarked, AND has an index for after you print it. The text and imagery is mostly in black and white, with the maps and covers being the only color images I recall seeing. While a drain on your printer, in my opinion, it is possible to print these books at home.

At first glance, it is obvious that a LOT of work has gone into this setting. Artwork is clean, predominantly line drawings. One or two images appeared to be repeats with in the book. Some detail is given to a setting specific calender and the general differences between PHB races, and their Belkanath versions. The flavor text is relevant, and creative. While of a style I didn't like, it tied right into the tone of the book, expanding on the material.

History is detailed, coherent, and well written, with side bars pointing out adventure hooks. 24 pages are directly given to this subject, though much of the text touches on it in other chapters. Well worth some reading! Loads of good ideas in here! Much of what is in this chapter will obviously be detailed in future books.

Geography appears to be consistent with the maps, and takes up roughly a quarter of the campaign book, at 58 pages. I didn't read every line of this section, as it is simply huge!

Maps were cleanly done, in both vector (CC2) and raster (CC3) formats. CC2 files were included in the download seperately, and are ready for use in CC2 or the free viewer. In the campaign books, there are the CC3 versions, ready for printing. The maps are of higher detail in the campaign book than in the included adventure, Throne of God.

Religion: Practices, Ranks, rituals, omens, holy orders, religions and demons are all detailed extensively in this 24 page chapter. Good source material for building detailed religions for your own world, if you use nothing else from this book!

A section of chapter 8 touches on metals, many of which would also be useful source material for folks who like to create their own game worlds. Some setting specific magic items are included in this chapter, again good source material.

Appendix One details an entire kingdom, in great detail. Almost a quarter of the book is taken up on this one subject. And it's very detailed! I've known WOTC to use fewer pages in detailing a country, much less an entire region! The source material in this chapter is worth the cost of the download alone, not to mention the chapter on religion!

Overall, there is a LOT more source material, a lot less rules in this book than in many I have purchased and used. Will I use this material at some point? You bet! While I might not play the setting, the basics touched on this book can be used to greatly enhance any future setting I make! Will I buy books fo rthis setting again? If this level of detail continues, I will! I did enjoy the fact that I wasn't wading through yet another book with a dozen new feats, spells, and assorted rules based crud that I will probably never get to use because it's tied to the setting. This made for a much more enjoyable reading than it would otherwise have been. After all, who wants to read pages after pages of stats? I'm looking for inspiration! A game with heart, not dusty old stats my computer can generate in seconds for me!

Game Balance: Can't truely speak to this, as I haven't gotten to actually play the campaign setting yet. But at an eyeball, it seems to be in balance.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: CC2 Maps needed to be zoomed out. Some of them are zoomed in on whatever the cartographer was last working on when the file was saved. The introductory adventure could use some bookmarks.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Humankind struggles to hear the "echoes" of heaven and epic struggle of good vs evil.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Well thought out and contains excellent production value.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>