All three books by hack & slash publishing have some interesting ideas and tidbits of information, hidden in mounds of random text, and need some serious editing. First of all the books lack a clear structure. It seems like several articles from the blog were just copypasted together for a book, without much editing or reorganisation. The sentence structure sways between what seems to be the authors personal notes & cryptric sentences like: „The reality of mechanical triggers is relevant only to inform our design of them for play in the game.“ Editingwise the difference between chapters & sub-chapers seem to be rather arbitrary, and all kinds of headings are the same size. There is no clear transition in between. Sometimes the images cover a part of the text. While the books claim to be system agnostic, they contain several concepts which have not been used since 3rd edition or even before (reaction rolls, constitution damage, only thieves can detect traps, etc.). Saves from staffs, rods & wands stems from AD&D and literally has not been used for more than two decades. Also I do not get why the author would assume that all player characters are female. The intro of the last book reads: „These ideas are the way I run campaigns, and the books were created as a reference for me. The fact that they are useful for other people is just a wonderful bonus.“ except that if you sell your ideas to others, I would except a bit more editing & clarity than just personal notes.

Of the three books I think the Bestial Ecosystems is the least useful one. It is just a random collection of -often contradictive- „facts“ about monsters. (There are seven different physical descriptions of chimeras and several „metaphysical“ ones.) While there are a few interesting tidbits the book does not actually talk about ecosystems created by monsters. In the Introduction it says: „ I once had someone ask me "how to use" the information in this book, and that question befuddles me to this day.“ and „There are so many ideas on each page of this book, it's often difficult to read or even look at.“ which sum up pretty well what you can expect. For somebody thinking about how to play monsters as more than just mindless hitpoint bags with teeth, I found „the monsters know what they are doing“ much more useful.

All three books by hack & slash publishing have some interesting ideas and tidbits of information, hidden in mounds of random text, and need some serious editing. First of all the books lack a clear structure. It seems like several articles from the blog were just copypasted together for a book, without much editing or reorganisation. The sentence structure sways between what seems to be the authors personal notes & cryptric sentences like: „The reality of mechanical triggers is relevant only to inform our design of them for play in the game.“ Editingwise the difference between chapters & sub-chapers seem to be rather arbitrary, and all kinds of headings are the same size. There is no clear transition in between. Sometimes the images cover a part of the text. While the books claim to be system agnostic, they contain several concepts which have not been used since 3rd edition or even before (reaction rolls, constitution damage, only thieves can detect traps, etc.). Saves from staffs, rods & wands stems from AD&D and literally has not been used for more than two decades. Also I do not get why the author would assume that all player characters are female. The intro of the last book reads: „These ideas are the way I run campaigns, and the books were created as a reference for me. The fact that they are useful for other people is just a wonderful bonus.“ except that if you sell your ideas to others, I would except a bit more editing & clarity than just personal notes.

Downtime and demises is chaotic, but useful. The lists of obnoxious pesants & weird nobles are entertaining to read by themselves, and make a great addition to play. The activities & labor were clearly created for AD&D & therefore have to be modified quite a bit to be useful for 5e (at which point you may just come up with something yourself.) The henchmen are a cool mechanic, but again younger players (and by young i mean younger than 35) will probably never have played a D&D version including this mechanic, making the whole chapter quite confusing. If you want to use henchmen & morale, consult one of the great retroclones out there. The rules will be more clear & concise. The wealth chapter has some creative random tables & shops. The construction mechanics are quite simple & straightforward. The rumors part is interesting, but again confusing. The campaign truths & secrets from the lazy DMs guide will give you a mich simpler way to incorporate foreshadowing. Of the three books in the series, this is the only one which I would consider buying again. Get the pdf version, so you can copy useful info into tables in your notes & leave the rest aside.

All three books by hack & slash publishing have some interesting ideas and tidbits of information, hidden in mounds of random text, and need some serious editing. First of all the books lack a clear structure. It seems like several articles from the blog were just copypasted together for a book, without much editing or reorganisation. The sentence structure sways between what seems to be the authors personal notes & cryptric sentences like: „The reality of mechanical triggers is relevant only to inform our design of them for play in the game.“ Editingwise the difference between chapters & sub-chapers seem to be rather arbitrary, and all kinds of headings are the same size. There is no clear transition in between. Sometimes the images cover a part of the text. While the books claim to be system agnostic, they contain several concepts which have not been used since 3rd edition or even before (reaction rolls, constitution damage, only thieves can detect traps, etc.). Saves from staffs, rods & wands stems from AD&D and literally has not been used for more than two decades. Also I do not get why the author would assume that all player characters are female. The intro of the last book reads: „These ideas are the way I run campaigns, and the books were created as a reference for me. The fact that they are useful for other people is just a wonderful bonus.“ except that if you sell your ideas to others, I would except a bit more editing & clarity than just personal notes.

The Artifices, Deceptions & Dilemmas is somewhat useful. The book contains three sections: room lists, traps & dilemmas. Some of the lists in the book are cool & novel (for example the kinds and conditions of doors.) The room lists provide an inspiration on room types & what they may contain. Its useful, but something similar exists in the DMG and the Dungeon Dressings series does the same thing much better. The traps section has some interesting „meta“ parts on traps (which part of a trap should be detectable, what kind of interaction is doable), but again it will be tedious to find the usable parts. The trick section again has interesting & useful tidbits, which are hard to extract from the two dozen pages. There is just so much random stuff in those pages (vampires as metaphor for rape, and werewolves for alcoholism) with no discernable connection to the specific chapter or the rest of the book.

A quarter of the preptime & more fun for everyone involved. This is an absolute must read for every DM veteran & newbie alike. Thanks so much.

Good resources in there, but waaay too much fluff.

There are some really cool resources in this book, but I feel like they could have been condensed on 2-3 pages. I am not a very experienced DM, but many pages felt like basic common sense. For example there is an entire page which can basically be summarised as: minis are not necessary but some people enjoy them. This will obviously differ per person, but the chapters I found useful are: Ch3: Speeding up combat, Ch5: Descriptions- before combat, Ch6: Battlefields.

I like the squat combat supplement. Its really useful for a glorious massacre (I mean of course heroic victory) trough an entire thieves guild. We did add more damage when you are “encircled” (meaning the squat occupies the same space as you). Giving the squat advantage for flanking would also be an option.

Last but not least, I would make the tokens octagonal (with the sides touching). That way they can be easily manufactured with a cutter. Cutting out round tokens with scissors, especially if the cardboard is a bit thicker, is quite a hassle.