This is a community project well worth the read, and as far as free products go, not at all bad. Lots of good people contributed to the making of this pdf and they did it because they love the game!

It's just a shame that another issue wont following it.

This is the first issue of ?Shadows of the Tower,? a free e-zine spinning out of the Barroks-Tower.net gaming community. This is a dense document (lots of artwork, a good deal of it full-color) that focuses mostly on material you can use in your Dungeons & Dragons game. After an introductory letter-from-the-editor presenting the e-zine, and a few pages devoted to what?s happening within the Barroks-Tower.net crowd, the d20 material begins.

?Things Are Not What They Seem? is featured in the ?Need an Encounter?? column. There isn?t much build-up here; instead, this encounter with Lionel Arcan, a high-level human wizard king and his followers could best be used to cap the end of an adventure. The characters ? Lionel, his concubine followers, and his ogre fighter champion (named Legbreaker) ? are given enough background and motivational information that a DM could use this material to supplement his or her existing game.

The ?Slice of Life? column is devoted to the NPC Duragar Brandhammer, a clean-shaven dwarven smith self-exiled from his people. This single page isn?t designed to be a full encounter, but a brief character description and adventure hook are provided.

Three prestige classes based around a sensory theme are next presented, and of them, the aesthetic eye (a blind character who has developed his or her other senses to higher levels to more than compensate for the loss of sight) is the most promising. The other two ? the sentinel (a rogue-like class who?s trained his or her senses to become aware of pending danger before the danger finds the sentinel) and the sensory adept (a near-monk-like class devoted to expanding all the senses) ? are well-balanced, but the aesthetic eye just seems like more fun to play.

There are two new feats and five spells, as well as a handful of magic items and even a few artifacts. Additionally, there are three new weapon qualities (the ?dusting? quality is the stand out here ? upon impact, a dusting missile weapon releases a fine dust that dulls an opponents olfactory senses, negating the Scent ability). Monsters and a brief piece of original fiction round out this supplement.

There?s a little bit of everything in this first issue of ?Shadows of the Tower? (save anything psionic); gamers are sure to find something of use here. The formatting and presentation is functional, but could use some tightening up in places, and if one isn?t careful while navigating this .pdf, you may inadvertently have your web browser redirected to either Barroks-tower.net or the homepage of Mark Allen, the contributing artist to this project.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: There is quite a range of D&D material available in this issue of Shadows of the Tower (with only psionics not getting a mention - see below). Most of the text is easy to follow, and the artwork is quite good.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I would have liked to have seen a psionics-mention or two here, especially since the theme of this issue revolved around the senses.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Shadows of the Tower is an e-zine published by Mind Forge Games. The zipped file is 10.26 megabytes in size, containing a single PDF which is slightly larger. The e-zine itself is twenty-eight pages long, including a page for the cover, a page for the table of contents, and two pages for the OGL. There are no bookmarks.

There is no printer-friendly version of the magazine, which will likely make printing this quite difficult for some people, as the art is plentiful, which much of it being full-color. That said, the artwork here ranges from well-done to incredible, with the full-page cover being truly spectacular in its rendition. Mind Forge Games would do well to use this same artist in future issues.

Each issue is meant to have a theme, and this month?s is the senses. Each of the various articles relates to that in some way.

The magazine, after opening with an editorial and news about happenings on the company?s website, opens with a pair of articles about specific NPCs. The first is about a deceptive and ambitious wizard. By far the larger of the two articles, this details his henchmen, and even outlines an encounter scenario, complete with a map on a grid, for PCs to face off against this character. The second encounter, a dwarf in exile, is shorter, giving his background, stats, and an adventure hook.

The next article presents a trio of sense-based prestige classes. The Aesthetic Eye is a prestige class for characters who are blind, but have honed their other senses to compensate for it. The Sensory Adept is a monastic prestige class for characters who sharpen all of their senses, but at the risk of having them be damaged by being so heightened. Finally, the Sentinels are those who are dedicated to their senses, improving them usually for the purposes of greater skullduggery.

The next section is Barrok?s Bin. This article collects a hodge-podge of other mechanics, lumping them together here. This article presents new feats, spells, magic items, monsters, and more. Because this is a community e-zine, each of the new crunch here is credited to the person who first developed it.

The first chapter of The Last Song of Mothath, a fiction story serialized in this e-zine, is presented next. However, it?s a short chapter, barely a page in length, making it hard to figure out what to make of it.

Altogether, Shadows of the Tower does its job well. It presents new material and highlights the community it?s drawn from, making the reader curious about the site that spawned this publication. The new materials here are useful and interesting, guaranteeing that even if you don?t visit their site, you?ll still have something you can use in your game. Since it?s free, there?s no good reason not to check out Shadows of the Tower. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: The new mechanics here are quite innovative, making this easily worth the download. The artwork is also notable in how good it is.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The lack of a printer-friendly version is acutely painful here, with the abundance of art. Also, the e-zine seems to have quite a few hyperlinks spread around it, meaning you can accidently find yourself clicking open your web browser to the magazine's community page.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

I was not sure what to expect when I downloaded this. This is a very nice looking magazine. I like that the news for the Tower site was in the magazine. (I tend to skip to certain sections of the site.) This is something I will keep coming back to. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Very professional. I could see this as a magazine on the shelf in my local game store. The encounter is awesome. I want to use this right away. <br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The first two prestige classes had the exact same progression table. And the desriptions did not seem to match the table. Was I reading this wrong?<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>