Much better organized than the other two sets in this series (appropriately enough). Planes of Law details the five lawful planes, with the usual intense focus on the Lower. Enough additional detail is given on each plane to make four of them suitable for adventuring and three of them interesting. It's not as misconception-shattering as Planes of Conflict or as out-and-out whacked as Planes of Chaos, but if you have Guvner or Hardhead PCs, or just characters who like touring all around the whole multiverse, it's a good deal for $4.95.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Arcadia and Mechanus both get a real facelift, both coming off less as generic TSR "non-Lower-plane-who-cares" environments but as eerie, unpleasant places full of secrets and mysteries. Baator didn't need any more help, but it gets it, and the section on the Garden is a masterpiece of creepiness.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I think Mount Celestia is just about unsalvageable -- a boring place full of boring beings that's no fun to adventure in (not in the least because you can't even travel on the plane without acting according to its alignment, something not true of any other plane. Acheron is made playable, sure, but its original origin as a bad joke (the plane of battle being an endless void full of bouncing dice) still colors every reinterpretation of it.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

Without a doubt, one of the top three best adventure products TSR ever put out. A great new threat to the multiverse as a whole has arisen, one that threatens life on the planes in a way the players have probably never considered. As the PCs see what's going on and try to figure out how to stop it, they find themselves at odds with panicked planars, opposing groups, an evil plot and several of the Big Secrets of the Planescape universe. It's an epochal adventure, with plenty of big fights, clever puzzles and desperate negotiations.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: All packaged adventures need tailoring, but this is the only TSR adventure I've ever seen that doesn't need huge sections reworked. There is some serious playing with the PCs' minds going on, too, and that touch of surreality that distinguishes Planescape from most of TSR's other settings.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: In order to even understand what's going on at all the players are going to have to have a deep familiarity with the Planescape cosmology. Despite the low party level required, this is an adventure for experienced parties ONLY.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The basic idea here is that, once every 300 years, the modrons march an army through all of the other planes for no apparent reason. Most get killed off but a few make it back to Mechanus; no one knows why they do it. This time, though, they're marching off schedule for no apparent reason, and behaving oddly to boot.

This is far from being an exceptional adventure pack -- in fact, it's close to unusable. The adventures involved are all tied together and occur in sequence, but with wide gaps of time between them; nevertheless, each one is consecutive in its level requirements. This is basically your campaign if you run it. The book's no good as a sourcebook; this Modron March is so weird that even what little general info you get isn't applicable unless you use the full background.

If you want a coherent campaign with more creativity and better writing, get Tales from the Infinite Staircase. If you want a combat-centered campaign that shakes the multiverse but actually makes sense, get Hellbound: The Blood War.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: The second scenario is completely playable and a lot of fun, although it makes the modrons into out-and-out villains. This is a problem, because most of the remaining scenarios are about helping them. It also actually gives (good-aligned) PCs reasons to participate in the story.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: In the rest of the scenarios are often blatantly coercive or just assume the PCs will accept missions with little motivation; there is no troubleshooting advice if they don't, just "if they don't take the job, there's no adventure." The scenarios repeatedly contradict each other about the basic way the March works and the conditions involved. Two scenarios are just nonstop combat; there are NPCs to talk to, but nothing to accomplish by doing so. Another scenario requires the PCs to seek vengeance for the death of an amazingly annoying NPC. The writing is poor and unusually gory, even for Planescape; only Hellbound was more bloody-minded, and it made SENSE there.

What's more, this is a metaplot adventure, which permanently changes the universe -- if you want to keep using later Planescape adventures, you have to either run this or assume that it happened in the background. In addition, this adventure never even tells the DUNGEON MASTER the reason for the premature March; you're expected to buy the next module in the series to find out!<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Poor<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

While it's demonstrably not NECESSARY, being after all just a book of detailed NPC descriptions, Uncaged is a great tool for Planescape DMs. The NPCs here include common shopkeepers, lawyers, researchers, street performers, spies and turncoats, and criminal overlords.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: It's not so much that this is a vital book because you need to know about these characters; rather, the biographies, descriptions, and interlocking relationships give you a better idea of how Sigil works and how to create your own intrigues and conspiracies. If you do use the NPCs as written, their tricks and plots are a terrific source for adventures -- this is one of the first books I turn to when I get stuck for ideas.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: One or two of the NPCs are a bit too typical of their kind (the shator and the modron especially), though it's more than balanced out by some of the seriously out-there entries.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The BESM Fantasy Bestiary isn't just a monster manual. Each entry is presented as a template, with two examples given for how you can customize that template to produce a variety of characters.

In addition to giving you fine control over the strength of monsters, it lets you use any of the monsters as a potential PC race. Templates can also be stacked, and several of these are begging for it (like vampire and werewolf).

The only flaw the book has is a tacked-on magical items list at the end. It wasn't necessary, and it's not very useful.

This was a repurchase for me -- I got this when it was new, but it disappeared some time ago.

This was the closest that TSR would come to a real cosmology until Planescape (which would end up going in almost the exact opposite direction). The physics of the Immortals is finely detailed, full of head-spinning concepts and opening great vistas of exploration for newly Immortal PCs. The monster listings are wonderful, and the new combat system for Immortal duels is a refreshing change from swing-roll-thwack-dead.

The system for handling Immortal powers is complex, but that's to be expected ... after all, you're not even supposed to open this book until reaching L30-36, with years of experience under your belt. Still, I wouldn't recommend starting from scratch with an Immortal campaign, as these power rules make Champions look like Toon.

The down side? There's not enough information on Immortal society, what they do from day to day, and what it means to serve a concept like Time or Matter. It's established that all Immortals accept that Entropy is necessary for the universe to survive, but Entropy's Immortals are still painted as evil psychopaths.

There was also some ridiculous nonsense about how PCs can "win the game" by reaching Hierarch status, starting over as a 1st level mortal, reaching Hierarch status again, and joining the Old Ones. Interesting concept -- if you've only got one player. Adventures might start to look a little odd if you have four Eternal Immortals and one second-level thief.

Putting that couple of paragraphs aside, the Immortals Set is a great toolkit for DMs to create a fascinating campaign where the PCs walk among their gods as equals. It's a lot of work, but it can be a lot of fun.

Well it's ABOUT TIME.

Until Planescape came around, about the only places lively enough to be adventured in were the Prime Material and the Lower Planes. The quick-and-dirty descriptions in the Manual of the Planes were enough to pique your interest, but that's about it.

It took them a long time to get around to the Elemental Planes, and longer still to make them what they should be -- wholly alien environments where adventurers are in constant peril and can't trust their own experience. The Inner Planes does a good job of pulling this off, expanding on previous material to make these planes live.

I will also say that this is the first time that certain planes (notably Fire and Magma) have been described accurately enough for me to have an answer when a player says "I step through the portal, now what do I see?"

Finally, I'm heartened to see that the Planescape writing team seems to have gotten over its self-congratulatory use of 1900s gutter slang. There's still some cant here, but it's controlled, and it's not put into the mouths of those who shouldn't be using it. This book is a pleasure to read.

The Planescape setting is an incredibly complicated one, and yet the average character living in it would know quite a bit about how it works. Some kind of Player's Guide to Planescape was necessary to give starting PCs an idea of what their world was like -- to fill the role in this setting that a player's own experiences fill in games set in modern-day Earth.

The Planewalker's Handbook is intended to cover basic questions about the planes, almost like a FAQ in narrative form. It describes the planes in a general sort of way (though it does a better job than that silly players' pamphlet that came in the boxed set). It gives you the mechanics of portals and planar spellcasting. It talks a bit about the factions and major NPC races. It provides some kits for the DM to throw out. It outlines, once again, how belief works.

Once you get past the @#!$@$# cant and actually start to read, the book is friendly and conversational, and seems to realize exactly how huge an infodump is required to get new players into the planes. It still feels like a textbook at times (the Priest Level Loss by Plane and Magical Item Bonus Loss by Plane charts at the back are painful to look at) but it's still a good resource.

The question is whether an infodump is the best way to get this information across, or if the Planescape DM might not be better served by requiring all players to start their first characters as primes and teaching them this information gradually. That's something each DM will have to decide for herself.

(Side note: it has nothing to do with this book per se, but am I the only one who finds the "Acheron, plane of combat, is a giant void full of bouncing dice" joke idiotic?)

What we've got here is a fairly basic miniatures game, specifically intended for wild, cartoonish battles.

The rules aren't as simple as they make themselves out to be, and the book's organization could use a little work. But the system's solid and it comes with some creative scenario ideas.

Basically, it's a lot like Warhammer 40k, but the rules are cleaner and, believe it or not, the setting makes much more sense.

While no miniatures are included with this product, there IS a series of miniatures intended for use with it. I purchased one set, the Ratzi Commandos, on impulse some time ago, and they were completely satisfactory. Considering you'll never find miniatures anywhere else for most of these characters, I'm glad the official series is of good quality.

This one's cute: rules for miniatures wargaming using the kinds of toys you'd generally find in a standard toybox. While you can use action figures, the rules are more geared to generic type toys like trains and "100 for a dollar" bagged army men.

The basic rules are simple, without giving much of a nod to balance -- you'll have to use some optional rules if you want things like accurate line-of-sight and sensible point costs. For what they're intended to do, though, they're serviceable, and you can learn them quickly.

This game seems to be intended more as an introduction to wargaming for children (probably 9 and 10 year olds) than as a game for adults. While it's fun, there's not much room for growth. Team Frog makes another game, Critter Commandos, that is similarly kid-friendly but has much more meat (err.. polystyrene) to it.