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Ten Ideas with a Twist

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Ten Ideas with a Twist
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Ten Ideas with a Twist
Publisher: Eridanus Books
by Nathan C. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 11/17/2006 00:00:00

Like many of you in the summer of 1999, I eagerly sat through one of the most intense and gripping movies of our generation, roller coasting through the plot hoping that our future drunk-driving convicted and poster child for washed up kid star Haley Joel masters his powers to speak with angry spirits with obvious father issues. And even when we were about to walk away pleased with a refreshingly good movie, that was when we found it. It was something that had been missing for a while, maybe even since Hitchcock.

The Twist

And so our favorite cameo loving director and others have attempted to bring the twist back, not just in movies apparently but, apparently, even in RPG PDF, as Eridanus does with their first product, Ten Ideas wit ha Twist.

Ten Ideas is a short, plain 10 page PDF with each page dedicated to a single adventure hook with a twist. Unfortunately the twists are more of Signs than Unbreakable. That is not to say that they are as bad as the Village, but they just are not that twisty. I expected hooks that would involve the PCs being put in serious moral dilemmas after finding out the twist, however, most are just sub plots of the adventure. A twist should take you to a completely different place, not just provide you a minor detour.

The somewhat saving grace of the product, however, are the adventure hooks themselves. Sure the premise of the Twist fails as bad as Lady in the Lake, but the hooks are well written and show some innovation in places. The one page format is very impressive as well doing more for the adventure hook genre of PDFs than hooks you will see in other sources. Each page is broken up into a beginning that describes the setup and basic problem, the event which details what is going on, the twist which introduces a subplot and then the follow up, which is a nice little addition that lays out a course for future adventures outside of the hook.

For the Dungeon Master The one hook I enjoyed the most and that did seem somewhat twisty is the Bloody Circus. Whenever a circus is put in a Dungeons and Dragons community, there is usually some shenanigans, the one introduced here is a bit more surprising than others I have seen before. Hunger Strikes is also fairly surprising and has a slight spooky atmosphere to it.

The Iron Word Though its premise of the twist only shows feint Signs of life, the ideas in the adventure hooks are decent and make this a worthwhile purchase if you are in desperate need of hooks, just do not expect many surprises.

<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: - the adventure hooks are common in dungeons and dragon communities, however, there is enough innovation in some to make them usable.

  • the layout of the adventure hooks is innovative for this type of PDF<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: - no real effort in the layout or even artwork for the product, I know its cheap but it doesn't have to appear cheap
  • the twists just were not twisty, I only found two or three of the hooks really interesting. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>


Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Ten Ideas with a Twist
Publisher: Eridanus Books
by Peter I. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 09/26/2006 00:00:00

Ten Ideas with a Twist is the first product in new pdf series from Eridanus Books. Each product in this series brings together 10 new ideas or plots with an added twist. This first product contains ten pages of fantasy ideas, one per page, and each can be used to inspire further adventures or new avenues of excitement. The ideas are system independent, meaning that they can be used for any fantasy RPG, or even adjusted for other RPG games such as Modern or Future games.

The pdf has a very simple layout and design consisting of one page exploring each of the ten ideas. There is no art, no bookmarks, no background, no border - in fact, there's only pure text within this document. Other than the title, company logo, and the mantra 'We get the ideas and twist them till they scream' there are no frills with this pdf. While short pdfs in general do not necessarily require more attention on the presentation font, I felt this could've had a little more added to it. Writing and editing is not the best, mainly because it appears that the writer is not a native English speaker. One would expect at least the use of a spell-checker though. Disappointing on the presentation front.

This product is about ideas for adventures, plots or even locations. Ten such ideas are presented, each entry containing an initial premise, followed by an exposition of the premise, a twist, and further follow-up ideas or plot hooks. Most of the ideas are interesting to read, although in most instances not as 'twisty' as the mantra of the series entails them to be. In most cases the twists are just standard fare or expositions of the plot, really - an explanation as to the true nature of the event, rather than an unexpected twist per se. In that sense these are really just detailed plot hooks or adventure summaries. Only one idea, the Enemy Within, stood out as something interesting - the others were average, with some seen-before ideas accentuated with occasional originality.

That's not to say that this product isn't useful - I think ideas are always something that anybody can use, and one person's bad idea might be another person's good idea. The product has merit and utility, with some spark here and there. The ideas, if played through, will probably be fun and enjoyable. The presentation lets the product down a bit, as does some of the writing and spelling, but generally there's something useful in it even if the ideas don't scream out as much as they could.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Some decent ideas that spark the imagination, particularly the Enemy Within, and overall useful as a starting point for generating further ideas and intriguing possibilities.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Presentation could've used more work, and some of the ideas are rehashes of familiar concepts and could've used more 'twist' rather than just exposition of the initial plot hooks.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Ten Ideas with a Twist
Publisher: Eridanus Books
by Andrew B. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 09/25/2006 00:00:00

The concept behind Ten Ideas with a Twist intrigued me. In my experience, a GM can never have too many adventure hooks. These are traditionally one or two sentences describing an adventure idea or event, intended to help the GM overcome writer's block. This product takes the idea of adventure hooks a step further, offering ten one-page adventure ideas, each with a surprise or deviation from the expected norm.

This is a 10 page PDF, with one page each devoted to a single adventure plot idea. There are no graphics or illustrations, making the PDF look rather plain. There aren't even any lines or headers to divide the text. A book like this doesn't need a whole lot of embellishment, but at the very least some lines, shading, and boxes could have been used to make the text a little more pleasing to the eye.

None of the adventure hooks in this product are bad, but few of them really stand out either. The biggest disappointment was the lack of anything that felt all that "twisted" to me. I was expecting to see some common fantasy plots that took unexpected turns. Instead, a got a handful of decent adventure hooks that pretty much go in directions you've seen before. That's not to say that these ideas couldn't be shaped into workable and even memorable adventures, it is just that the authors failed to deliver anything really different. Of the hooks, I liked Enemy Within and Possessive the best.

Ten Ideas uses a bit of a strange design. The hooks, at a page each, give more detail than typical adventure hooks. Important NPCs are often named and described in basic class / race terms. It would have been nice to see the designers go a step further. A few stat blocks for the villains, or the occasional new rule or monster would have helped make this product even more useful. While not strictly necessary, little touches like this would have gone a long way toward earning this PDF a higher rating.

The text of Ten Ideas with a Twist is riddled with typos and minor grammatical errors. The word item, for example, appears misspelled as "iten" no less than five times. In one place, the authors use the word "despered" which, from context, I can only guess is supposed to be "despaired." These aren't major errors, but they happen far too often to go unmentioned. At times, the grammatical mistakes do hurt the flow of the text, making for an awkward read.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: I like the concept: a series of one page adventure hooks, each with an unexpected twist. Some of the ideas could, with some work, be turned into decent adventures. The hooks are good for getting the GM's creative juices flowing, if nothing else. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: This really isn't a very professional product. The layout is plain and boring and there are several spelling and grammatical errors throughout. The ideas behind the hooks aren't really anything you haven't seen before. While they're more detailed than the kinds of adventure ideas you find in, say, the Dungeon Master's Guide, the extra information doesn't really add up to a lot of added value.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br><BR>[THIS REVIEW WAS EDITED]<BR>



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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