An Endzeitgeist.com review

This module covers 50 pages, with two additional pages devoted to the Lands of Lunacy character sheet for OSR and 5e, respectively; this page count already excludes front- and backend matter and editorial. My review is based on the hardcover version of the module. I do not own the electronic iteration. The hardcover does not have the name on the spine, in spite of sufficient space, but considering the striking, white cover and art-direction of the book, it stands out on the shelf.

This review was requested by my patreon supporters, and as such was moved up in my reviewing queue.

I’d like to ask something of you: Please read the entire review before making your decision, for the rating this received is VERY contingent on priorities.

Obligatory caveat: I don’t think that dual-system supplements are ever a good idea for the customer, as you have to pay for at least one system’s content that you usually won’t be using. Different systems have different power-levels and internal logic: Some OSR-games assume that you can fling plenty of fireballs, while others don’t. The power level of a 5e or PFRPG group will vastly exceed that of e.g. a similar party made in Labyrinth Lord, and implicit design assumptions, like an ability to fly at certain levels can result in some serious logic issues. That being said, as far as this module is concerned, these problems did not surface for me. One more downside from a reviewer’s perspective: How do you rate a book that does one system well, and another atrociously? You have to rate such a book at the median value, which can be rather sad; a good example would be Brindlemarsh, which is a nice module in the old-school context, but fails utterly at 5e.

Okay, so this module is intended for 4 to 6 PCs of 6th level, and power-level-wise, this actually works both for OSRIC and 5e without being too deadly or easy in either iteration. While the adventure briefly references the Lands of Lunacy, the like is not required to properly run this. Rules-wise, this module assumes OSRIC as the OSR-system., so let’s talk about that aspect of the book for a bit.

The monster appendix presented can be commended in a positive manner: We get stats for the relevant creatures featured in the adventure, and the presentation is actually easier to parse than OSRIC’s standard statblocks: The creature writeups take a cue from 5e, in that they list the respective creature abilities, with bolded headers – much like e.g. the formidable Old-School Essentials presentation of B/X-rules does. I really like this, as it makes parsing the information of more complex creatures easier. On the downside, the creature skittershade’s web ability erroneously uses the 5e-ability. This type of guffaw is the exception, though – at least when it comes to rules. As a pleasant surprise, the book for example codifies global spider rules for web walking etc. There are some small hiccups here: The distance a web can be fired, for example, is erroneously called “reach” instead of range.

On a formatting side, the ability headers are inconsistent, and so is the way in which venom is handled, which, apart from the inconsistency, is per se a plus: Instead of giving every spider a save or suck poison, the module takes a more differentiated approach. One spider’s venom e.g. causes additional “venom” damage, with a save for half; on a failure, the target is reduced to 0 HP and has a few turns before dying, allowing for intervention. Now, granted, there are enemies with save or die here, but as a whole, the module exercises a welcome restraint here. The aforementioned inconsistency pertains to this venom damage, by the way – in one poison, it’s untyped, in the other, it’s designated as venom damage. This does not impede functionality, though. “nausea with fever induced” as a consequence, sans rules-repercussions, though, is a bit weak. Does this nausea work analog to sinking cloud, for example? The rules-formatting does sometimes fall into an almost 5e-territory, instead of rephrasing them. An example: Venomous Spit. Ranged Weapon Attack: Range 120 ft., one target.[…]” You may not mind, but it’s very jarring if this is the ONLY attack of the target formatted thus. Even a cursory editing check should have been able to unify these.

Spell-references do not properly italicize spells, as per OSRIC’s conventions, and instead capitalize them. There are also typos like “venemous[sic!]” or “Axionatic[sic!]” to be found. On a formal level regarding the criteria, these are a mess. On a rules-language level, though, they are functional. You can run these rules without needing to fill in crucial gaps. There are exceptions to this rule, like aforementioned nausea, but they are few in number. One even made me smile for how absurd it is: “1/day – Darkness at will.” You can glean from the context that this is simply supposed to be darkness at will, but if you need further proof that even a moderately capable rules-editor could have polished this further…well, there you go. There are two magic potions/ointments included; one of these references the advantage mechanic from 5e, probably, because, short of one paragraph, they have been cut-copy pasted. In 5e, they lack scarcity ratings. In short, the formal criteria of the rules-presentation are not good, but they are not atrocious – I’d call them passable.

Can the same be said about the 5e-materials sported herein? Well, it’s “Constitution saving throw”, not “CON save” in 5e; “(Recharge 3-4)” should be in italics and bolded, and it should be (Recharge 5-6) instead, as recharge is rolled with a d6. As one can read on the 11th page of the Monster Manual, in the very basic core rules for critters. Medium creatures have d8 HD, not d10. Large creatures have d10s, not d12s as HD. The final boss does not list their HD next to the Hit Points. Spell-references are not formatted properly, and there are typos like “rech[sic!]” for reach. We can also find incorrect skill or ability score values: Skittershades should have either a Wisdom modifier that’s +1 to make their Wisdom-based skill values check out, or increase the value of the two by +1 to justify that with getting double proficiency bonus to the value; as presented, the values are incorrect. One of the spider statblocks puts the “poisoned” condition in quotation marks and erroneously refer to the associated damage type as “venom damage” instead of poison damage – particularly egregious, since the minority of the statblocks use the correct damage type.

Average damage values are often off: 1d6+3 does not average to 5; 2d6 don’t average out to 6, but to 7. The average damage value for 3d6+4 should be 14, not 11. The Huge Brown Spider’s Dexterity should be 16 to make her Stealth and attack values check out. The Huge Wolf Spider’s Wisdom score is off for her passive Perception, and Strength needs to be 18 or 19 to make her bite attack value check out. 2d8+3 does not equate to an average damage value of 9. Funny: The same paragraph gives 12 as the average value for 2d8+1. Webbing, instead of giving an escape DC, requires a Strength check. There is no cure disease/poison spell in 5e, that role is served by lesser restoration. By any metric applied to the statblocks, they are not good – which is puzzling, since they are close to correct in almost every instance. Syntax is generally correct or at least very close to it, and the balancing of the adversaries is suitable for the power-level. In short, while the stats are pretty bad, they are not nearly as atrocious as some others I’ve seen. If you don’t care about statblock integrity, you can run the module with what’s provided. Still, I have rarely found myself wishing so hard that some competent 5e-designer had at least looked over these statblocks.

Now, as for the formal criteria of the module: The adventure comes with read-aloud texts, and uses brackets to denote 5e-rules and DCs -the latter being sometimes rather problematic – “Observation DC 17”? that’s not a 5e-skill…so yeah, aforementioned issues bleed into the module, but not to the degree where I’d consider them to be getting unduly in the way of running the module. The adventure provides random encounter tables, where applicable. Structure-wise, we have a village and a brief overland trek leading to a dungeon with small levels, but multiple ones. The complex actually has more than one entrance-vector (which are fully realized – level 2 is actually the most likely entry-level!), and the dungeon comes with a sideview that helps the GM picture it properly. Furthermore, we get lavishly-detailed maps – they are aesthetically-pleasing, and show more details than usual, including webbing. Much to my most pleasant surprise, we get the full array of them presented in player-friendly versions as well – a huge comfort-plus! Even better: The maps actually do redact secret rooms and the like in a manner that makes the maps spoiler-free. Huge kudos for going the extra mile. Less pleasant for 5e-GMs: The maps assume 10-foot-squares, which makes them less useful for the purpose of 5e’s tactical combat.

As for the general aesthetics: The module probably fits best into a setting such as AAW Games’ Aventyr (With a reskin for the start to the underworld, it’d make for a nice expansion for AAW Games’ fantastic 5e-Rise of the Drow) or Kobold Press’ Midgard, as the module tends to gravitate to high fantasy aesthetics, with some subdued magitech. It should be noted that this doesn’t mean that you’ll find guns or the like – the tech is somewhat steam-themed and has a pre-industrialism feel, so it won’t e.g. break the consistency of settings like Faerûn or Krynn.

Ideally, you set this module up a few sessions before running it, but in order to talk in detail about this, I’ll need to go into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

…

..

.

Only GMs around? Great! We begin in a small town, where a talented smith named Jenest lives – this NPC works best if established as an ally/valuable asset/friend before the module starts, as the default hook sees the small village encased in webs as the PCs arrive – and overrun by dangerous spiders, their smith kidnapped. The trail through web-choked forests leads the PCs to a cabin (where smart 5e-players and pretty much any OSR player whose character reached 6th level knows to rest – in the dungeon proper, that’ll be a bad idea. It should be noted that a random encounter can yield a handout, which can be found in another way as well. Either way, the trail leads to cliffside – on top, a chimney is an optional means of getting inside, if the main entrance seems foolhardy to the PCs – in and below the cliff, the complex of Nevnooblin awaits. What’s Nevnooblin? Well, it’s a pretty damn cool setup for a dungeon: It is essentially a dark gnome/svirfneblin startup, where the gnomes have taken to infusing giant spiders with chaos energy siphoned from a planar breach to the Landy of Lunacy. Why? Turns out the silk thus infused is super-potent, and their drow investors acting essentially as venture capitalists, want results.

Funnily enough, this rampant exploitation of spiders has rather irked none other than the eponymous Fosc Anansi, a unique demon/godling-esque monstrosity that did not consider this exploitation of his eight-legged servants funny. Suffice to say, the shadow of the spider goddess did not hesitate when wreaking havoc and assailing the complex.

Nevnooblin as a dungeon deserves the fullest respect and is the best thing I’ve read by Fail Squad Games so far: The dungeon is internally consistent and makes sense: With its network of water/steam pipes (which may be damaged and harvested, at the risk of destroying weapons), it feels unique. Granted, the rules don’t operate as they should in 5e (and the separation of the two systems breaks somewhat apart here), but these pipes also essentially give the PCs means to use the dungeon to their advantage, which they definitely should do. So, we do have a dungeon that has unique tactical properties – from hissing steam to creaking valves, Nevnooblin feels very distinct, and it does an excellent job at environmental storytelling – the dungeon does not explain its purpose per se, but clever players can and will piece together the function of the complex.

The somewhat twisted logic (worker safety? Pff, who cares…) also extends to e.g. a massive compactor – which is btw. no stupid save or suck trap, but rather a handy tool that clever players can not only learn to use, but do so with devastating effect regarding their opposition – the compactor deals tremendous amounts of damage. Automata, looms and sewing stations – slowly but surely the complex will divulge its secrets, and unlike some of eh weaker offerings by the author, the complex doesn’t lose steam (pun intended) and retains its fidelity and organic construction throughout without railroading the PCs into actions. The details provided help the GM understand everything and manage to achieve what precious few modules do: Make the complex feel plausible and unique, yet fantastic – and WITHOUT constantly resorting to “A Wizard did it”-syndrome. Everything makes sense, and the level of detail goes so far as to provide temperature values in both °F and °C. Awesome! Thank you! There is also some mild horror to be found, including e.g. survivors with last dire prophecies/hints before dying…oh, and the notes and exploration? They hold the key to actually finding the ways to properly win the scenario.

You see, ultimately, the PCs have to stop Fosc Anansi and his legions, but things get worse, as the drow party sent to take control is approaching as well – the finale requires a tough decision as the PCs save Jenest: Leave to stop Fosc Anansi and have her stall the drow (she succeeds, but pays for it with her life), or stop the drow, but have Fosc Anansi massacre the town…They can’t eb in two places, so what’s the smart move? Well, there is this one engine that the note for new recruits told you not to set to a certain setting, right? Well, doing so transforms the entire complex into a gauntlet of bursting pipes that will collapse sooner, rather than later, preventing the need to fight the drow as well, and freeing the capacities to stop mighty Fosc Anansi – provided the PCs are toasted by their attempts at getting out of the complex, that is! The fight against Fosc Anansi is btw. a multi-stage affair, with phase one below, and phase 2 above – this is not only the best boss fight in any Fail Squad Games module I’ve seen so far, it’s a really good boos fight regardless of publisher. It’s deadly in both the OSRIC and 5e-versions, and ole’ Foscy gets two different forms in either. The one-page artwork of the final form also provides an intimidating handout for your players. Just sayin’…

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are the one thing that this module struggles with, big time. On a formal level, there are more typos herein than I’m comfortable with, and formatting is inconsistent time and again. On a rules-language level, we have some minor snafus in OSRIC, some major ones in 5e – the book really needed a strict rules-editor or developer to go through this and polish it. In my estimation, fixing this book’s issues would have taken a day or two, tops. Layout adheres to an easy to parse two-column b/w-standard that is simple, yet elegant. As often for Fail Squad Games, the artworks deserve special mention: All original pieces, all impressive. My personal aesthetic highlight, though, were the maps: Their details, and particularly the fact that we get proper player-friendly maps? That’s a HUGE plus, particularly these days. I can’t comment on this regarding bookmarks, etc.; as mentioned before, the hardcover is stark white, distinct, and doesn’t have the spine on the back.

Bryan Burns as the 5e-conversion specialist, unfortunately, didn’t help the integrity of the rules to the extent that I wished. On the plus-side, the 5e-material can be used, but there are too many errors in them to consider that task a success. My list above? It’s not comprehensive. Not by a long shot. So yeah, the OSRIC version runs smoother if you want my opinion. It’s not perfect either, but its rules are better than the 5e ones, provided you can stomach a bit more checks than usual.

Lloyd Metcalf’s modules always have some sort of potential, but things can get in the way. In some, it seemed like the author ran out of steam; in others, the rules got in the way so badly that the modules ceased working.

It is my tremendous joy to announce that this is NOT the case here. The attention to detail and genuine love that went into this, is palpable. This has all the markings of a labor of love, from the small details to the way in which the module establishes a sense of plausibility that is hard to achieve; the little touches show a level of love that is impossible to fake. This is n earnest, well-crafted yarn with a dungeon littered with interaction points and things to do, that rewards good roleplay over good rolls (though PCs should not be sucky – this is an old-school module!).

In case you haven’t seen that coming: I genuinely enjoyed Fosc Anansi. It plays well, feels unique, and if you want to support the author, I wholeheartedly recommend getting this book.

But this book puts me into a super-weird spot as a reviewer. Not only do I have to account for two systems, I also have to account for the fact that we have a writing/concept-wise fantastic module, but also one tarnished with blemishes so serious that it’s hard to recommend this, particularly for 5e.

To give you an idea: If I rated this purely for mechanics, I’d give it 3.5 stars for OSRIC, 1.5 stars for 5e. If you want correct stats, correct rules-language and are as allergic as I am, or more so, regarding having to fix nonstandard rules to fit the system, then think twice before getting this. There’s a good chance the book will aggravate you to no end. You should probably consider this to be, at best, a 3-star book, probably lower if you run 5e.

If, however, I disregard mechanics and rate this solely on the strength of its vision, based on the obvious love poured into this – well, then this’d be a 4.5 or 5-star module. In many ways, it vindicates what I’ve said before. There is some serious talent here, hamstrung by VERY pronounced issues in rules design and editing. If you play rules fast and loose, or if you consider rules-glitches to be great exercise for flexing your own design muscles (hey, I know I do!), and if you’re looking for a great fantasy yarn full of spiders that takes a different approach, then chances are that this module will make you smile as much as it did make me. I really liked this module, in spite of its glaring and very pronounced issues.

Fosc Anansi is, ultimately, a mess of a book, but a lovable, charming mess. If you’ve read and run as many modules as I did, you recognize when somebody really poured their heart into a book. This is such a book. And traditionally, I have always rated fun and ambition above mechanical perfection. Went back and forth for quite a while about the final verdict, but considering the difference in quality of the complex featured and the genuinely cool ideas and set-up, my final verdict, this once, will be 4 stars – if, and only if, you have a VERY pronounced tolerance for rules-hiccups. If not, consider my rating suggestions above to be more representative. I genuinely hope that Fail Squad Games can recapture that spark and build on it with better rules in the future.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This Thunderscape-supplement clocks in at 17 pages, 1 page front cover,1 page back cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 12 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

Okay, like the last supplement in the series, this pdf focuses on depicting named NPCs with their respective stats and brief histories – so let’s see if this one fares better!

Well, if the Smoketown Bandit, a CR 4 jurak alchemist radically opposed to Mekanus’ industrial infrastructure is anything to go by, then partially, but not wholly: The build is missing its daily bombu-use, bomb DC, and unless I overlooked something, their damage is off as well, which is a pity, for the discovery-selection is neat. Arcus the Black (CR 11) once was a member of the Radiant Order but his slow descent into anti-paladin-dom isn’t really justified, which struck me as weird, considering he’s got an arena where he pits the captured against each other and legions of soldiers. He, like the previous character, and all but ONE NPC in the entire book, is missing his threat-range and critical multiplier. Big no-go. His CMD is also off by 1. On the plus side, I liked that favored class options and ability score improvements taken are explicitly noted in the pdf.

Bilefang, a rapacian fallen (befouled) 7, is interesting: The survivor of a horrible catastrophe, he has found solace in his unique, grotesque and mutated state, and uses his powers as a killer for hire. Nice one. Durreal the bloody, a level 1 thunder scout, acts as a horribly-scarred vigilante. His signature vehicle’s stats are not included, and yes, I noticed a hiccup in the stats as well. Goremax Bloodhorn, a CR 9 ferran brute golemoid (juggernaut) was once a feared bandit lord – but when he was considered to be slain, his will persevered and allowed him to reach a mechamage, and he became a golemoid – I like that idea. He is tough well-armored, but oddly, two of his magic items are not in italics.

Infectious Elanna is one of the more interesting characters herein: The CR 7 entomancer is obsessed with insects carrying infectious diseases. Her CMD is off, big time. Verminous servant stats are not provided. Karigitha, a serpentine-blooded Jurak sorcerer captured and brainwashed by naga, is a tragic figure, and comes with a sidebar that talks about the possibility of redemption here – I liked that. Unfortunately, I e.g. did notice e.g. spell DCs noted being off. The Shogun (the one character who correctly lists threat-range/multiplier) is a samurai 5/slayer 5. The build lists a feat called “7”, which I couldn’t find and assume to be a glitch. The swamp lord is a CR 15 master summoner who is missing his spell save DCs and has other glitches as well. On the plus-side, abbreviated minion stats are included.

Tovar, the Grand Kazan of the High Steppes, is facing a challenge he probably won’t be able to win, against a jurak contender…and we all know how the desperate can cling to power. This CR 13 villain is super interesting, in that he stands to lose everything. His mount’s stats, are absent from the book, even though his rage powers include ferocious mount and trample. The Iron Tyrant Lord Marlek Urbane gets a huge and compelling background story, and is a genuinely complex character: Both heartless despot and one of Aden’s greatest heroes ever. AWESOME. His artwork is similarly amazing. Rules-wise, he is a paladin (shining knight) 14/fighter (tactician) 4, and gets CR 17 – I assume due to resources! I really like that, in spite of his alignment, he’s not an antipaladin, and his faith and doctrine are fully explained. This fellow’s build is also one of the more challenging ones and worthy of such a legend. I’d go so far as to say that this fellow is also the hero of this supplement, as it’s easily the most interesting construction within. The final NPC herein, Wamba the Mad, is an elven witch who curiously seems to ignore that fact…she is thoroughly obsessed with immortalizing her legend…and insane. Kid most of the time…but, well. She is multi-facetted, and from small tidbits about her character to this dynamic, I liked her story, if not her build, which, you guessed it, does have hiccups. No familiar stats included either.

The pdf concludes on a strong note, with two villain organizations, namely the Gray Masters and the Nameless Ones – both are strong and inspiring, but don’t sport any actual organization rules – they are all about flavor, but do that well.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting, on a formal level are good; on a rules-language level, this is a deeply-flawed offering, though not as uneven as the Heroes of Aden book – there is more consistency here, and the builds are more interesting as well. Layout adheres to Thunderscape’s two-column full-color standard, and the pdf comes with 2 neat full-color artworks I liked seeing. Annoyingly, the pdf lacks any bookmarks, which is a comfort-detriment.

Shawn Carman, Chris Camarata, Rob Drake and Rich Wulf have certainly improved since the last book of NPCs. There are, writing-wise, some real gems and cool villain concepts in the book; there also are some less exciting ones, but as a whole, the lore is neat. The statblocks, while less problematic than in the last book, unfortunately still suffer quite a bit. There are a lot of small hiccups herein, though they tend to be at least somewhat consistent. You can use the stats here and get a CR-relevant villain…but the errors are still a downside, particularly the annoyingly persistent threat-range glitch, hiccups like daily uses missing, and off DCs. The latter is particularly puzzling when the build focused on getting that DC up via feats… So yeah, rules-wise, there is still quite some room for improvement. The absence of any companion stats, even for classes that have it as a crucial feature, is JARRING. Seriously.

And yet, it represents an improvement in writing, in build-quality, and as a whole, while I consider this to be a mixed bag on the negative side of things, I’ll round up due to in dubio pro reo from my final verdict of 2.5 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the „…of Porphyra”-series clocks in at 24 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1.5 pages of SRD, leaving us with 20.5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue at the request of my patreon supporters.

In case you weren’t aware of it: Porphyra RPG is pretty much compatible with PFRPG’s 1st edition; the game behaves akin to how PFRPG modernized 3.5 back in the day, and presents a continuation of the tradition, in contrast to PF2 being a whole different beast. As such, the content herein can be adapted to PF1 with minimal fuss.

We begin with the tale of the fall of the Ruby City of the Mountains, Chelmor, at the hands of the elemental-kin armies, and then proceed to learn about their turbulent history on the patchwork planet; how the war between Elementalists and Deists waged, how they suffered, and how they ultimately segregated from the teachings of the Zendik order.

Each individual write-up features a brief overview of the race, the racial characteristics (including alternate ones), and supplemental feats. All are, obviously, native outsiders. Ifrit get +2 Dexterity and Charisma, -2 Wisdom, are Medium with a base speed of 30, and get darkvision (which has no range in Porphyra RPG and includes low-light vision), resist fire 5 , and if you have a spell list, you get spells with the fire descriptor added and cast them at +1 CL. When they take fire damage, the ifrit get fast healing 2, though there is a scaling fixed daily cap on how much they can heal per day. They also get a +1 racial bonus to attack-rolls versus non-elemental outsiders, and choose elf, orc, or human, getting a +4 dodge bonus against the subtype. The race also gets dancing lights 1/day as a SP. Alternate racial traits include replacing the fast healing for a +2 racial bonus to Stealth; the fire spell affinity and SP may be replaced with 1/day enlarge person as a SP; fire magic affinity may also be traded in for +1 fire damage with unarmed attacks and making them count as armed; the fire resistance may be traded in for +2 to initiative. The attack and dodge bonuses can be traded in for Diplomacy as class skill, bonus and boons that let you retry. There is a nice consistency here, in that the aforementioned bonuses represent war memories and hatred, which doesn’t fit with Diplomacy; in short, there is consistency of tone and mechanics here.

The race also gets two feats: Blazing Personality lets you demoralize as a swift action; Scorchblade lets you sue a swift action to wreathe a weapon in fire, increasing its damage by +2 fire damage for 1 round. Now, in case you didn’t know: Porphyra RPG feats scale: Blazing Personality, at 5 HD, lets you demoralize via Diplomacy, sans the targets taking it personally. Scorchblade increases its fire damage at higher levels.

The Khashabi, also known as woodfolk, get +2 Strength and Dexterity, but only have a 20 ft. speed, which is not modified by encumbrance or armor. They also get darkvision, a natural armor bonus of +1, resist radiance 5, the same bonus to attack as the ifrit versus non-elemental outsiders, and the same dodge bonus. Why? These are the traits shared by the elemental kin due to their experiences in the wars. Khashabi get +4 to Stealth (bonus type missing, should be racial) in overgrown areas and forests, and a +4 racial bonus to resist combat maneuvers hat move them while they’re on the ground. They also get enlarge person as a 1/day SP. The armor and dwarf-like movement can be replaced with 30 ft. speed; alternatively, the armor can be traded in with proficiency in unarmed strikes and a threat range of 19-20 with them. The race adds all radiant spells to their list, if present, and 1/day in full sunlight, can heal 1d8 + Charisma modifier damage. Nitpick: This should state that it can heal their own damage; as written, the wording is ambiguous and could be taken to instead apply to anyone. It’s pretty clear that the ability’s supposed to only apply to the khashabi, though. This one btw. replaces the war abilities. The plant-stealth and difficult to topple abilities can be traded in for a + racial bonus to attacks with axes. The racial feats include scaling damage bonuses with weapons made of wood and additional sun-healing uses.

The oreads of Porphyra get +2 Strength and Wisdom, -2 Charisma, and get the usual native outsider, darkvision and war memory abilities as above; their elemental resistance applies to acid, and they get an analogue ability to the ifrit regarding healing when taking acid damage, with the same cap thankfully in place. Their SP is stone fist 1/day, and, bingo, they add all earth descriptor spells to their spell-list, if present. These magic tricks can be replaced with 1/day entangle and access to all plant descriptor spells instead. Stone magic may also be replaced in favor of an increased Ac versus ray attacks, and 1/day Deflect Arrow style ray deflection. Cool! The SP may be traded in with the ability to sacrifice a gem to increase the CL or damage output of earth spells. The attack bonus versus non-elemental outsiders can be exchanged for two class skills, representing sapper-experience, and elemental resistance can be exchanged for an untyped +2 to combat maneuvers made to bull rush or overrun. If you have the gem magic tricks and want to see more, consider using the Crystallomancer feat. (As an aside: These oread abilities reminded me of Underworld Races & Classes, particularly the colliatur and the svirfneblin’s gem magic, so if you enjoy these concepts, blending them would be a neat idea…) The second racial feat makes stone weapon wielding a reliable operation, and provides a damage bonus with them.

Sylphs receive the war traits, air magic affinity, alter winds as a SP, resist electricity 5 and +2 Dexterity and Intelligence, -2 Constitution. They also get the self-healing when hit, this time applying to electricity damage. Cool: One of the war-traits can be replaced for a bonus to Knowledge (engineering) and a 1-time-round trip for free to any place in Poprphyra, courtesy of your Fourlander Flight guild connections. The healing and air magic can be replaced with an AC boost courtesy of the winds surrounding you, and you can exhaust this passive ability with a 1/day ranged combat maneuver to bull rush or trip a target. Neat! The resistance can also be exchanged for a bonus to saves versus diseases, poisons and related conditions (which is quite valuable, considering that poisons are better in Porphyra); the second war-related trait and SP can also be exchanged for running Stealth and reduced penalty while moving. Finally, the anti-outsider bonus can be replaced with increased summon-duration for air creatures. The racial feats include scaling negative energy melee damage in shadows and darker, while the second one nets you scaling power and uses of feather fall and shocking grasp as SPs.

The undine of Porphyra get +2 Dexterity and Wisdom, -2 Strength, swim speed 30 ft. hydraulic push as the 1/day SP, and their resistance applies to cold, the magic affinity obviously to water spells. One of the war traits may be exchanged for +2 to CL, and SPs and water magic affinity may be exchanged for a cold cone breath attack. If you choose the latter, you can get a feat that also lets you wreathe your weapon in scaling cold damage, analogue to the ifrit feat. The war traits and water magic may be replaced with blindsense 30 ft. in water; the SP can be traded in for poison use, and one of the war traits and resistance for a bonus to saves versus mind and poison effects and poison. the latter bonus is not typed. The other racial feat requires taking the CL-boosting trait, and nets you an additional 1st-level spell slot for water spells, as well as the ability to ignore level increases of metamagic 1/day for a water spell. The ability can be used more often at higher HD.

Finally, there are the Vithr, also known as Ironmen – much like the Khashabi, they get a rather cool full-color artwork; rules-wise, they have +2 Strength and Charisma, -2 Intelligence, and their elemental resistance applies to sonic damage. Beyond the shared war traits and elemental spell affinity, we have ironskin as a 1/day SP. Minor nitpick: The elemental affinity has a cut-copy-paste glitch, referring to water instead of metal as the relevant descriptor. Unfortunately, they are missing the entry for their base speed, which is somewhat egregious, since the first alternate characteristic lets you exchange elemental resistance in favor of +10 ft. movement when charging, running, or withdrawing. The magic-related characteristics may be replaced with +1 to CMD (should be typed), the SP for a +1 natural armor, and one of the war characteristics with an untyped bonus to saves versus fear (should be typed). On the plus side: 1/day forming a metal piece into an object weighing 10 pounds or less? Awesome. One of the racial feats represents an alternate ability score adjustment array as well as axe proficiency, Dwarven language, and scaling a mage bonus with axes. The second feat lets you negate critical hits by sacrificing armor or shield, which become broken. I like this conceptually, but it should have some sort of caveat, since it’s reliable, and nothing keeps me from stocking up on a ton of bucklers…

4 global feats are also included: These range from a potentially Con-damage causing dance-challenge (NICE!) to Elemental Sight, scaling sues of plane shift to the associated plane, and the rather potent Zendik Commando, which can net you two of 5 bonuses when adjacent to an ally or flanking with them. The verbiage, unfortunately, is super-vague her. Are these chosen once? Each time anew? Is a “+1 teamwork bonus to attacks of opportunity” a bonus to the amount of times per round, or to the attack roll? I like this feat, as it looks like it’s a teamwork feat worth taking, but it needs to eb more precise.

The pdf also provides 6 archetypes: The Bolt-thrower is a sylph archetype for the arcane archer (which is my least favorite Porphyra class); this one lets you fire limited amounts of arrows that count as magical at higher levels and also cause bonus electricity damage; starting at 9th level, you can create arrows ex nihilo, the latter of which replaces all of archer’s luck, instead of having a scaling boost at 14th and 19th level, respectively. The Brotherhood of rust for the vithr is locked into the elemental assassin secret, and instead of poison use, gets the ability to lace their weapons with radiant damage. Interesting: the second secret nets you a cloak, which makes you count as in a situation marked by the element, but takes up the shoulders slot. The ifrit forgeknight eldritch knight gets a special breastplate bonded object in which they can sleep, crafting, and later may make the armor glow. The Khashabi get nature’s wrath as a champion cause, which enhances your survivability in a natural environment, as well as later providing a companion steed, telepathic bond, growing, etc. The oread pillar of stone for the stalwart defender, which is a minor engine tweak with a cool endgame, that lets you self-petrify into a nigh-invincible stone form. The undine seeker of Arlia is essentially a water-themed magic bloodhound for the slayer class.

7 magic items are presented: Elixirs of infiltration make native outsiders pass as human; forgelings are cylinders that seem to fuse with the hand, becoming harder to disarm; they can change variant weapon types as an immediate action: The Warhammer form, for example, bypasses a specific material DR, etc. Iron rings flat out negate the first 4 critical hits or sneak attacks per day, but make the wearer susceptible to rusting attacks; at just 12 K price, this is VERY strong. Khanjar of resistance let an elemental-kin apply their resistance as damage on critical hits. The mask of radiance can be charged up to fire light beams – oddly at a fixed attack bonus, and sans specifying the type of action that firing the beams takes. Oppressors of the elemental-kin are shaped like related items and can cast 0-level spells, but can also enslave the related elemental-kin. Totems of the elemental kin net an ability score boost and a CMD boost versus being demoralized.

The pdf concludes with 7 new spells: Absorb weapon is an exotic spell that heals you when struck, as you absorb weaponry used to attack you if the wielder fails a Reflex save. Ironskin nets a scaling bonus to your pre-existing natural AC, and may be dismissed to negate critical hits or sneak attacks. This is pretty strong for level 2 – at the very least, this spell should imho be exotic. Awful radiance dazzles those nearby and imposes more penalties on the light sensitive. Radiant armor is a defense spell that causes minor radiant damage to foes attacking you in melee; Radiant beam and focused radiance both deal radiant damage in a pretty straightforward manner; flame of Aurex is a mythos radiant battle spell. Radiant damage, by the way, cannot be healed by positive energy, or by fast healing and regeneration – only naturally, making it a VERY valuable resource.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting oscillates from proper precision to a few instances where the author falters and falls back into old habits; as a whole, I consider this to be a well-crafted supplement, though unfortunately, some of the glitches do hamper the rules-integrity of the presented material. Layout adheres to the series printer-friendly 2-column standard with purple highlights, and the supplement comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. The artworks presented are full-color and really nice.

Perry Fehr’s take on Elemental-kin starts off very strong: The respective races have been tweaked to work well in the context of Porphyra RPG’s assumed power-level, are well-executed and share enough similarities to be considered to be related, also historically, but also have quite a few components that set them apart. Much to my surprise, I found myself enjoying some of the alternate racial traits most here. The system’s scaling feats are a good call, and remain so, but what’s done herein with them is often less interesting than what I’ve seen, often favoring a simple escalation of numbers, which is valid, but e.g. minor fire damage boosts won’t justify spending a valuable swift action at higher levels. The scaling here needed some nuance. The archetypes are probably the weakest part of this book – they have cool concepts, but their execution is very basic, making them all minor modifications. They left me with a sense of unrealized potential, and feel slightly rushed – e.g. the arcane archer archetype lists a higher level ability before a lower level one; that sort of thing. Why am I talking about “unrealized potential” instead of whacking this more? Because conceptually, there are really cool nuggets here, and they’re realized. I was also surprised to see some of the cool ideas for the elemental-kin as a whole – Perry Fehr is great when it comes to cultures and the like, and I wished he spent more time on them here.

As a whole, I consider this to be a mixed bag, slightly on the positive side of things; personally, I wasn’t too blown away by the archetypes, but some might well enjoy them. Still, as a whole, when compared to what the author has done before, and what other authors have done with Porphyra RPG, this feels less impressive to me. If you’re looking for a selection of strong and interesting elemental kin-races, this’ll do, and you should round up, but as a whole, I think this is closer to 3 than 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This adventure clocks in at 38 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, 2 pages Land of Lunacy character sheet (one OSR, one 5e), leaving us with 32 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was requested by my patreon supporters, to be undertaken at my convenience. While the module does have ties to the Lands of Lunacy meta-setting/template, you do not need aforementioned supplement to run this – these ties are very subdued and tenuous at best. The review is based on the pdf. I do not own the print version.

Before I get ahead, I should note that one character is depicted in the character sheet, taking up a page – this was done only in the OSR-version. The 5e-version is in the file per se, which is weird. The final page of the module is taken up by a goblin song, which was a nice touch as far as I’m concerned.

To address the elephant in the room: This is a dual-format pdf, which means I have to rate it in its entirety, as for how valid it is for both OSR, and for 5e. This also means that half of the rules-relevant content will be superfluous for all customers. I am a big opponent of dual-system files, as they are inherently customer unfriendly, and if e.g. one version is much better than the other, it makes rating the entire book harder. This is not the case here, as you’ll see.

Genre-wise and regarding its aesthetics, this is perhaps closest to early Forgotten Realms; it doesn’t have the Greyhawk-grit, is what I’m trying to say.

As far as rules are concerned, the module seems to be based, OSR-system-wise, on Labyrinth Lord. 5e-rules are provided in brackets, and there is read-aloud text provided, though not a copious amount. The module is designated as suitable for 4-6 characters of 1st to 3rd level, and while that might work for BECMI and B/X-derived rules sets, this does not hold true for 5e. 2nd level characters will have too easy a time (for the most part), while 3rd level characters will curbstomp the opposition to kingdom come day before they have even finished their breakfast.

Okay, so the following is an adventure-review, so here come the SPOILERS. Potential players should…

…

I can’t do it.

I seriously can’t.

I will not divorce mechanics from content, and frankly, you should be aware of the issues this has, and I’m not going to dignify this with a properly enunciated spoiler-warning.

The story is per se a pretty simple:  A few years ago, human settlers discovered a marshy plain, and proceeded to dry it with the help of a dam. This, alas, displaced goblins – somewhat like the metaplot of Expeditious Retreat’s “Stonepick Crossing”, just minus the settlement actually being in the damn, and thus, interesting. The human leader is Stroh Larhley, and he promises some rewards – 4 magic items, none of which have been properly adjusted to 5e, and they are not interesting either. Don’t believe me? 10% bonus to clerical turning checks against undead. Oh boy. A dagger that “emits light on command.” Oh boy. It should be noted that both magic items and spells are persistently not properly formatted throughout the module.

If you’re a fan of DCC, you’ll have guessed the name of the antagonist: Curtis. Curtis Mileach. There is also an optional encounter with Di-Zimm, and Brensalle. (This one was contributed by Bob Brinkman, and is BY FAR the best thing about this book – it’s an albino goblin outcast with a massive ferret, who is actually friends with some kids…but also paranoid. There is a chance for a genuinely nice trip through the pair’s labyrinthine warrens, with the resolution and how it goes mostly contingent on player-skill.) This encounter has nothing to bear on the module’s actual plot, but it’s where some joy was found for me, so thank you. Mr. Brinkman. The artwork for the pair is also stunning.

…okay, in case you didn’t get it, the names are thinly-veiled anagrams of Harley Stroh and Michael Curtis, and evoking these two titans of adventure-writing made me wish VERY HARD I was running one of their adventures instead. Heck, same goes for Brendan LaSalle and the rest of the DCC-crew. Homage is fine and something I generally enjoy, but putting such a reference front and center means that you should at least attempt to live up to the referenced material. This is not the case here.

But back to the main plot: Curtis Mileach was corrupted by an item from the Lands of Lunacy, and now guides the goblins in a bid to blow up the dam. The goblins have a backup plan, and have tainted the human water supply. There is no proper way to notice this, since the village isn’t properly depicted. Not even means to notice tracks, etc. In 5e, one would assume that a village with a mid-to high-level caster would purify food if people got sick, but I digress. This boils down to a lackluster “it’s not over yet” final encounter...that never comes. See below. However, even if, due to you fixing the module, the PCs get here, you’ll notice that the hobgoblins involved here are missing their whole attack section of their statblocks.

En route to the damn, we have rot grubs, which are depicted in a way that is super hard to beat, in how it fails to grasp how 5e treats hazards. They are depicted as creatures, which makes no sense.

The main meat of the module is the dungeon of the goblins, where Mileach and his cronies have created the “infernal machine”, which spans 3 levels, with ropes and pulleys; one highlight here is a schematic of one door and the rope system through it – at this point, I once hoped for some awesome payoff. This machine can blow up the damn.

And this is where things become “fun”: The module can’t RAW be solved in either version. The first room of the machine notes that there’s a percentile chance for drowning everyone in the complex if you even TOUCH the machine. There’s also only a “25%” chance that characters can disarm the trap ONLY on this level. The second level notes that the machine can’t be disarmed here, only in the previous room. The third level of the machine also points to area 1…which means that the trap is a self-referential, kafkaesque nightmare that may never be properly disarmed, only activated via mechanics that make limited sense in one, and no sense in the other of the designated systems. It immediately flooding the complex and drowning everybody is also a Schrödinger-scenario, as another room notes that it takes 6 rounds – so which is it?? Close-reading this self-contradictory mess literally gave me a migraine trying to understand it, only to realize that the module simply is sloppy and RAW not solvable.

Oh, and what about some fun save-or-die SLOWLY, but too fast to reach the village for a cure disease effects? Those are always fun, right? Fun fact: There is no such spell in 5e. Lesser restoration. The module also has one of these “fun” scenes, where the BBEG talks to the PCs, and casts essentially a suggestion-like spell while talking, without the PCs noticing. Why? How? Never explained, because that’d take effort or an actual understanding of the rules.

Speaking of effort: There are essentially magitech items (like a baton that deals additional damage due to being electrical) for the goblins, and no value ratings or the like are provided for them; their rules are at best boring in the OSR-version. In 5e, they’re a sloppy mess. This is particularly true for every single serious instance of 5e-rules-formatting: Things that are supposed to be bolded are not. A reaction is missing in its entirety. Things are lower case that shouldn’t be. Things are not in italics that should be.

Speaking of 5e: This pdf introduces LL’s initiative rules for encounters and for Turns in 5e. I kid you not. Turns…are RADICALLY different things in OSR-games and in 5e. In 5e, it’s your turn when you get to act. This bothered me to no end. It’s not all. The module proceeds to state something ballsy about this use of initiative, which is incompatible with how 5e operates.

“[T]his adventure is created with the intent of using the following order of events from older versions of the game. This approach may alter the balance and outcome in some 5E conversions of encounters. Some accommodation may need to be made on the fly by you, the Game Master, to maintain balance and a challenging game.“ (Those Dam Goblins, pg. 1)

WTF.

Seriously, WTF???

Let me translate that into plain English for you: “We want you to jam an initiative system in a half-baked manner into your game to make our dual format module work. We have no idea how, and don’t care that your game already has a perfectly functional one. We have called this a dual-format module, but we actually have no clue how one of the two systems this is advertised for, works. You may have purchased a module so you don’t have to do the hard work, but guess what? You’ll still have to do the balancing!”

W-T-F.

If that doesn’t bode well: The OSR-stuff may be bad, but the 5e-rules are a whole new level of WTF. Things that should be saving throws are called checks instead. This sentence is designated as 5e-rules: “A successful Knowledge (Nature) or Knowledge (Healing) check [DC 15] reveals the benefit of the herbs.” This is NOT 5e!!! The module does not understand the difference between Perception and Investigation. Sometimes, the pdf calls it “INT save.” There is an instance where enemies auto-detect PCs unless they’re invisible, which contradicts how both systems work. The magitech items are utterly non-functional in some instances – glue never specifies whether it behaves as a melee or ranged weapon, or its ranges. Magic items lack scarcity ratings or gp-values.

If you’re playing 5e, you’ll also want to know that proper damage types are missing pretty MUCH EVERYWHERE. If it’s a trap, an item, or anything like that, expect to have some sort of issue with it.

…

And there is not a single correct 5e-statblock herein.

Not one. I went through all of them. From math not checking out to missing bits, to wrong HD to the omnipresent, atrocious formatting, they all have issues, many of which influence the integrity of the rules.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are atrocious. On a formal level, there are glitches, but on a rules-level, this is genuinely BROKEN. Layout adheres to a two-column b/w-standard with really nice full-color and b/w-artworks, original pieces. These are the one good thing about this. The pdf has no bookmarks, which makes navigation of this mess annoying at best, and adds one last injury to this insulting clusterf***.

Christopher Clark’s module, expanded by Lloyd Metcalf and Bob Brinkman genuinely made me feel bad. Because I felt like a bully writing this review. Because, from the albino gobo hermit with his ferret to the idea per se, this has a good premise. It is, alas, a premise that has not been executed.

No, there is no “well” missing, because the frickin’ module can’t be solved in either system as written. I don’t object to the introduction of modern, tech-y items for the goblins, though that does limit the appeal a bit, it could have made this work. Heck, after the introduction/summary, I hoped for a cool, complex, perhaps even visual puzzle for the dam-busting machine! I mean, it’s master Metcalf – he could draw that! And the first room ahs this cool schematic illustrating how the rope goes through the door.

None of this goes anywhere.

I felt bad about not liking some Fail Squad Games modules, I felt bad about bashing some of them for their shortcomings, because I don’t like being negative. Because there always was this spark, this attention to detail, that showed that the authors cared. The skill might have been lacking from e.g. Marathon of Heroes, but the idea was good – if that module had been written for a system the authors actually understood, it could have been a fine romp! Roadside Respite may not be perfect, but there is some fun to be had with it. Brindlemarsh’s 5e-rules may be a mess, but at least the module is playable in OSRIC. The technical issues notwithstanding, there always is some minor saving grace in these adventures, and they usually feel like the author(s) cared.

I can claim none of these things about this frickin’ mess.

This module, right after Bob Brinkman’s conceptually nice sidetrek (If you can ignore the rules-issues), nosedived so hard, it genuinely pissed me off. I screamed at my printout.

This is EASILY the worst module I’ve reviewed since “The Verdant Vault of Malakum”, and unlike that cluster-f%&#, this ate much more pages. I’ll delete this pdf. After that, I’ll throw away the paper I used to print this.

This feels like the authors lost any interest to actually try making this work. This feels like a case of lost interest, of laziness, of something phoned-in. It doesn’t engender pure rage or outrage, it just left me feeling drained, disappointed and empty.

I have nothing to recommend here. 1 star. I’d give less, or 0 stars, if I could.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The massive Druid Enclave Adventure Book clocks in at 838 pages; if you take away the introduction, the explanation of Infinium Game Studios‘ FlexTale and quadded statblocks etc., you instead arrive at around 820 pages, which renders this massive doorstopper of a tome one of the largest books I have ever covered.

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue due to me receiving a print copy in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Okay, so first things first: The “Druid Enclave Adventure Book” is imho not an adventure book: It’s a massive, tome-sized setting supplement that depicts a city in intricate, obsessive detail; it can be likened o arriving in e.g. a Skyrim town sans quest-indicators and the like, with nigh endless “interaction points.” If you are familiar with Dark Obelisk I: Berinncorte, Druid Enclave is more akin to that book than to Dark Obelisk II. The Mondarian Elective – by design.

The latter tome, which depicts a ginormous mega-dungeon, did hint time and again at this enclave, for this place owns the site of Dark Obelisk’s second part. As such, the best way to picture this tome, is to consider it an optional companion tome, or to use it as a stand-alone city supplement.  If used in conjunction with Dark Obelisk II, the Druid Enclave adds stronger hooks to explore, and breaks up the ever-deeper sojourns into the vast subterranean mines and caverns with some political intrigue, faction roleplay, etc.

Factions? Yep, there are a ton of those in this book – the write-ups that also are featured in the player’s guide are included herein as well. Now, I personally expected to see the prestige award mechanics for Pathfinder to be represented here, alongside perhaps some unique mechanics and rewards, items, traits, the like – but alas, no such thing is provided. The factions remain flavor-only, which is a drawback as far as I’m concerned. They do have one addition in comparison to the player’s guide: Each faction gets AT LEAST one quest-outline. These are not fully-realized adventures per se, but instead rather detailed adventure-sketches, with suggested sequences etc. noted; some of these tie in with overarching plots, while others are small sidequests, like convincing a young man who failed the test to become an elite guard, to give up his position and face his failure. Personally, I am not a big fan of the reward star-mechanic used in these books, but that’s a matter of taste; what’s less a matter of taste, is that some of the rules and how they are suggested to be employed contradicts how PFRPG usually handles the like. Convincing someone of something via Diplomacy is usually not an opposed check in PFRPG, for example, much less one contested by another social skill – the DC depends on starting attitude and Charisma modifier. Bluff, on the other hand, is opposed by Sense Motive. This does not wreck the book, but if you’re picky about rules-aesthetics, or if your social skill-focused character has invested heavily in starting attitude adjusting tricks, this may rub them the wrong way and require some refinement. On the plus side, most of the quests do not have this problem, and there are quite a few sketches for brief skill challenge-lite discussions provided, something I certainly appreciated.

Negotiating between treants and druids, uncovering the culprit of fur-forging going on, and more: What if, for example, one of the factions seeks to permanently separate from the enclave, and also demands a stipend? Much to my pleasant surprise, many of these quests provide a) meaningful tasks that require neutral parties such as the PCs, thus making sense to be outsourced to them, and b), also genuinely allow the PCs to shape the face of the Druid Enclave as they adventure. Some of these quests also directly are in opposition to each other – what one quest giver might sell as quenching the seeds of sedition and rebellion, another may portray as a request for very much necessary aid, essentially posing a fantasy-version of a whistleblower-dilemma. The realm-wide operating factions, alas, do not get their own quests, which is a missed chance here, as it’d have been a great way to provide additional, global entry-points to the Dark Obelisk saga. On another note, it’d have been prudent to cut them in favor of organization benefits, prestige awarded progressions, and the like, but that’s just my opinion.

Now, as you know by now, I am a pretty big fan of the context-bands FlexTale uses for rumors and lore to be unearthed, and as such, the 15+ pages section that contains rumors and lore provided in FlexTale tables (can be run as is), as well as random encounters, can be considered to be helpful indeed. It should be noted that this book does use the FlexTale 1.0-book to randomize the contents of every table and crate: If you have a table, you can simply roll on the tables for Martial 1H and Martial Ranged to determine the weapons on top; rummage through a sack, and you roll on the Rations and prepared food-table. Much like in Dark Obelisk II, I strongly suggest using these tables. To cut my long-winded explanation of why this can be so great short: It lets you zoom in to a treasure content, and makes it hard to determine the “proper”, the “relevant” interaction points, and separate them from what would at best be dressing in most supplements. If you want to know more about that, please consult my reviews for FlexTale and Dark Obelisk II.

Each level of the Druid Enclave notes its connection areas and levels in the beginning, and tables to randomly determine NPC presence etc. can also be found. As in the Mondarian Elective, the details are what makes this unique: When you have a thoroughly-mapped, massive city, where every weapon, chair and the like may be seen on the map, you can do things that other books just can’t do. Take a simple guardroom. In most gaming supplements, that’d be a brief one-paragraph summary, perhaps with a  similarly brief read-aloud text, right? Well, in Dark Obelisk II, and in this book as well, we instead have a fully-depicted map of the room in detail, with 6 keyed encounter areas IN THIS ROOM ALONE. And yes, they do have read-aloud text – while not every keyed area has the like, A LOT of them do, including e.g. just stacks of crates. That is insane in the best of ways, particularly considering that FlexTale would allow you to “zoom in” even further. It’s hard to convey what this does to the playing experience without actually trying it; I tried to convey it in the Dark Obelisk II-review, but in short: It makes everything feel incredibly persistent and tangible, and it conceals things like secret doors and “adventure-relevant content” in a truly astounding manner. This also extends to gaming-related content, mind you: If there’s a counter, it’ll let you know about the bonus to Stealth that crouching behind it may yield; if you need to pass a checkpoint, the book’s tell you how many checks it’ll take to pass it. On the downside, the production for both PFRPG and 5e means that there are instances where a “Reflex/Dexterity check” are noted…and this is the PFRPG-version. That sort of stuff should not be inside. Moreover, in 5e, that should be a Dexterity SAVING THROW, not a check – those are two different things regarding proficiency, but that as an aside. In short: For every instance, where the book takes the time to tell you that a secret door’s easier to find on one side, including proper modifiers, we also have one of aforementioned snafus.

A massive 369 pages of the tome are devoted to the dramatis personae and common NPCs; the named NPCs come with their own (mostly) b/w-artworks, and structurally, we usually get around 2 pages of flavor information, and 4-5 pages of statblocks, as the NPCs come in Infinium Game Studios’ usual quadded format. The stats make use of Pathfinder Unchained’s variant skills, though these are easy enough to ignore, should you choose to. As always, we get the respective abilities and less common feat-texts required to run these copy-pasted to the end of the respective statblock section, and also as always, don’t expect to see classes featured beyond the more common: If you expected to see vigilantes, shifters, occult classes, etc., you won’t find those here, with the cut-off date seeming to be pre-ACG. As far as statblock integrity is concerned, it’s pretty decent considering the sheer amount, but stats are more than just their math, and it is here that the quadded statblock format continues to fall short.

On one hand, Aquilae has this notion of making characters have higher ability scores to make up for less items, but on the other, it doesn’t fully implement automatic progression for them. It also comes apart at the higher two difficulty tiers at the latest, partially because the gen-based approach is contingent on a flawed metric; challenge, particularly at higher levels, needs to be carefully crafted, and does not follow a linear progression. As an example that perfectly illustrates this issue, let us take a look at the Farmer statblock for the members of the Rake & Sickle faction, which is essentially the peasant’s guild. (Guild membership is denoted quickly in text and with guild icons.) It should be noted that this is the most unfair example I could find in the entire book; the statblocks generally are better than that, but the farmer illustrates my point best, and in the most drastic fashion. That being said, the following should be considered to be the most exacerbated iteration of the issues discussed, and it is not representative of the average statblock quality.

As befitting of such a fellow, the lowest level band statblock makes him a commoner 1/fighter 1, with a low Intelligence, but damn high Constitution. At 18 HP and with a good Fort save, this fellow works well as the “tough farmer who can also wield a weapon.” Let’s move to the final band. Here, the farmer is a commoner 7/fighter 4; his AC has improved a whopping 3 points since the lowest level iteration, to 16, but he now has a +2 returning shortspear and 111 HP, which is certainly respectable. And he’s supposed to be CR 10. Now, the CR-mechanic has always been flawed, but this is a great way to illustrates this. The fellow attacks at +11/+6, and deals a whopping 1d6+4 damage per attack. The feat choice, with Defensive Combat Training and Desperate Battler make sense, but don’t help make this a valid CR 10 build. Feat-choices like Animal Affinity, Athletic, or Endurance fit the farmer-angle – but not that of a CR 10 obstacle. If one takes the stance that the build is supposed to be a hardy farmer, I can’t help but marvel at the fellow having two +2 items in the first place, which RAW would suffice to feed his family for YEARS. And yes, I am aware that I am picky here, but this…it takes me straight out of the world that the excessive details generate. In many ways, the Infinium Game Studios supplements are soothing to my OCD regarding details, the need to flesh out everything…it’s all done for me. Such instances take me back out of it. In many ways, I think that all of these books would be better if they focused on providing statblocks for one or two bands, but making sure that they are valid and make sense in-game.

For fairness’s sake, the book shows that it can deliver good statblocks at higher levels, which it particularly highlights with the named NPCs, where we get proper AC and attack values for multiclass characters, level-appropriate ACs that mean that the NPCs won’t be curbstomped immediately, etc. AC 29, two +5 weapons and proper armor at CR 15? Yep, that should do it. On the downside, e.g. feats like the entire TWF-tree still have not been included in the attack sections, which might require that you do some adjustment on the fly, which is usually hard-coded in the statblock of NPCs. I see the value of quantity regarding the statblocks as a reviewer, but I do believe that the quadded statblocks also result in quite a few drawbacks, which, for me as a person, remain more pronounced that the benefits.

Why am I harping on this for so long? Well, because the supplement otherwise does a rather impressive job regarding the NPCs: As in the player’s guide, we get an overview, appearance & demeanor, but we also learn about the background, combat tactics, faction membership is noted, and habits and logistics are also provided. Speaking of evolution: Know how I loved the nuanced attitude tracker in Berinncorte, for example? Well, the book provides the explanation of that sub-system, and nets general modifications, but each named NPC also features their own personal attitude modifiers. Some do respond favorably to rumors being shared, while others do not. If anything, these personalized modifications are neat, but there are a bit more general ones here than I’d have liked to see. Pretty much every non-criminal NPC does not take kindly to direct action against the enclave, but at least the values by which they take offense differ, so this does get a pass - partially. There are a couple of instances where I wished a more nuanced approach had been taken. There is, for example, a working-class lady who considers herself to be a socialite, but who constantly slips regarding her sociolect. Okay, so how does she respond to being made aware of that? What if a PC does so publicly? How does she respond to offers of being coached properly? This is particularly evident, since the lady’s questline is about a tailor, who modifies her dresses to look more posh – and she wants the PCs as intermediaries. That is a cool Pygmalion-style sidequest, but one that would have worked better with a more nuanced individual attitude tracker.

Nice for GMs who have a hard time improvising dialogue: Each named NPC comes with conversation pieces and answers to likely questions posed. Almost everyone of the named NPCs gets their own questline attached (Gaeryn being a sample exception for a NPC sans questline), though not all of them are exciting: Surviving an attempt by one NPC to assassinate them is an encounter, not exactly a quest that needs to be spelled out for anyone. In many ways, that is the crucial flaw of Druid Enclave – it relies, as far as grand narratives are concerned, too much on pointing to Dark Obelisk II, and doesn’t have as much going on regarding grand narratives of its own. In a way, I believe this to be intended, as the faction set-up, council and council-members with their questlines generate emergent gameplay when you throw the group of players inside. Add to that the plethora of short slice-of-life-style side-quests, and we get an environment that feels alive and generates adventuring almost on its own.

And yet, it does not utilize what it has, ignores its own crucial strength: Its scope. With this amount of detailed maps and NPCs, this has an unprecedented potential for running investigations, complex plotlines, conspiracies. Picture it: A timeline of clandestine meetings and actions, a conspiracy threatening to unravel the place’s social order. Unlike in pretty much all published modules, you can meticulously track the progress of a NPC and the party through the fully-mapped city; you could do fantastic detective/intrigue scenarios, shadowing targets, murder mysteries, fights in the streets and more – the Druid Enclave has a dream come true of a set up, and with its redacted player-friendly maps, vanished NPCs hinting at secret trapdoors – this could handle all of that, and setting it up would be comparatively simple! “NPC A moves from map A, location 1, to map B, location 3. (10 minutes); there, they lock the door behind them, and enter the secret door, closing it behind them…” Druid Enclave has this intricate faction set-up, with the council elders as powerplayers and the whole settlement subject to the unique flavor and situation; the place practically reeks of intrigue, but all that potential remains relegated to the  more or less personal space and faction quests, and does not sport “big” questlines beyond the ever-looming Dark Obelisk II. And I don’t get why, for the set-up is probably the best of any Infinium Game Studios books to date.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good considering the vast scope of this tome, and the fact that this is a single man’s exceedingly ambitious vision. Layout adheres to Infinium game Studios’ two-column full-color standard, and the supplement provides quite a lot of original b/w-artworks for the NPCs. The full-color cartography of the supplement is excessive in scope and detail, and brims with small touches that make the city feel alive. The gigantic hardcover comes with its name etc. on the spine. The adventure book does not sport player-friendly maps, since these are included in the player’s guide.

J. Evans Payne’s Druid Enclave is a natural evolution of Berinncorte in themes and scope; a ton of small slice of life quests, a ton of NPCs, an organic settlement that feels alive. In many ways, I’d be more impressed by this book if I had read it prior to Dark Obelisk II. Druid Enclave’s central issue, as noted before, is that it doesn’t fully capitalize on its scope and complex faction set-up; it promises intrigue and politicking, a change of pace from the gigantic mega-dungeon in Dark Obelisk II, but this change of pace remains on the micro-level, not the macro-level; on the individual level, all the small tidbits are great as a change of pace, but if you expected, like I honestly did, to get a complex set-up that would potentially interweave plotlines with Dark Obelisk II, and/or that had its own massive faction-based plotline, you won’t find it here. Another thing that could have elevated this further, would have been a means to influence elders and factions based on things done in Dark Obelisk II, perhaps working towards a specific resolution that all at first oppose? That sort of grand storytelling would have also provided a good reason to dive ever deeper into the mega-dungeon, to retreat – it would have added a dynamic to the whole monster.

In many ways, I have a hard time rating this book fairly, because I can’t help but feel a twang of sadness for what this easily could have been with a tighter focus. I’ll still try. Druid Enclave is partially a fulfillment of the experimental promise of Berinncorte; it is an organic city, it does not feel constructed, and it is rife with detail and potential. It literally BRIMS with it. At the same time, it suffers from the same weaknesses as Berinncorte, namely the lack of big things to do, of genuinely complex storylines. The side quest-sketches are nice, but in Druid Enclave, they feel a bit like getting tasty fast food servings made from a vast table of 5-star diner ingredients. In contrast to Dark Obelisk II, we have less of the regular adventuring fare like exploration to pick up that slack, much less the utterly novel slow-burn build-up of atmosphere that made Dark Obelisk II so utterly novel and captivating to me. This is, in short, an improvement over Berinncorte in execution, but has even less big quest-lines going on regarding the macro-level that that tome.

For me as a person, this is a 3-star book. As a reviewer, however, I can see this work much better for other people who are less interested in complex and nuanced storylines than me and my players. As such, my reviewer’s final verdict will be 3.5 stars, rounded up.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The massive player’s guide for the Druid Enclave supplement clocks in at a ginormous 200 pages; if you take away front/back end matter, you’re left with 193 pages; approximately 10 of these pages are devoted to explaining how to use this book; as Infinium Game Studios has a couple of unique things going on in their supplements, including quadded statblocks, etc., this is appreciated. It should be noted that the introductory section also features a couple of helpful angles: A brief “Game starts in 5 minutes” information briefing (sans SPOILERS) and some general hooks are provided. As brief summary of the setting of Aquilae’s peculiarities is also included here – thankfully, ocne more, this section is properly adjusted to be player-friendly.

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue due to me receiving print copy of the hardcover in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The book begins by providing the general information regarding the druid-run eponymous city, including a proper settlement statblock, and some notes on general fines imposed by law enforcement, as well as notes on encountering the watch; the encounter-summary here does reference the page-numbers of the big book. The random guard encounter table thus feels pretty displaced here, but doesn’t per se hurt the book. This out of the way, we are introduced to the council members that run the Druid Enclave, each of whom comes with a nice b/w-artwork, and a summary of races and alignment and classes, but without stating the class levels – a good thing, considering that general class is probably something the PCs can discern, while exact power-levels, well, obviously are not.

The Druid Enclave sports a surprisingly deep level of politics and faction interaction, and as such, the book prints the rules explaining the faction presentation here. Factions are presented with an overview, a brief description, and are classified by type as military, intelligence, trade, etc. Beyond that sigil, alignment, racial restrictions if any, key motivations and day-to-day goals are noted alongside long-term objectives. Notable philosophies, such as phrases or mantras, are provided, and influence levels are classified in 7 steps, ranging from no influence to near total control. Faction reputation is similarly classified in 8 categories, and there are 9 categories to determine how old a faction is. A total of 14 general size categories are provided, running the gamut of regular size categories, but also including Family, Local, etc. 8 stability and resource categories are provided. Common traits, dues and taxes, general demeanor and membership notes are provided as well. The supplement also covers the peculiarities of religious factions, if applicable, noting favored weapons, domains, etc. All those categories come with d%-values, so if you want to randomize faction sizes, powers, etc., this system per se delivers. While I don’t necessarily think that the section needed to be in the player’s guide, it does render reading the faction write-ups simpler. Beyond that, I consider the orientation provided by these components as a valid strategy to think of factions in a structured manner, so yeah, nice.

Speaking of which: We begin with two write-ups of major deities, namely the hardliner Zugul, god of order, and Sheergath, who is probably one of my favorite fantasy deities, concept-wise: The deity is usually depicted somewhat goatlike and is CN – and the portfolio? Resigned fate. The deity teaches acceptance, and is as such popular for the downtrodden and those screwed by life. It is at this point where I should note that names for members depending on their station are included for the factions, which is a nice touch indeed. Beyond tehse religious factions, we have no less than 12 local factions, which include the dwarven miner’s union and administration already noted in Dark Obelisk II: The Mondarian Elective, and beyond that includes e.g. guilds for Pelters, farmers, hunters, etc., all properly noted. In many ways, this prominence of factions/guilds does add something subtle to the overall supplement: It makes it feel more lived-in, realistic. You probably know how important guilds among craftspersons were in the medieval age and beyond, so having something like this? It makes the city feel more plausible. 14 additional factions are provided beyond the local ones, which include the secretive information-gatherers of the Scarlet Path, the Order Mechanique, couriers and more – we essentially get a good overview of the movers and shakers of Aquilae here, and I very much enjoyed reading this sub-chapter.

The next massive chapter is devoted to player-friendly maps – the chapter sports an overview of the enclave’s levels in a sideview-ish organization, and then proceeds to present the metric ton of maps herein; as always for Infinium Game Studios, the player-friendly maps really deserve their name: Trapdoors and secret doors on the GM maps have been properly redacted, going that extra mile that I love seeing. Speaking of which: Like the Mondarian Elective, the quality of the maps is higher than in the first Dark Obelisk. The city may look more ordered than a dungeon, but the amount of detail, from weaponry lying on tables to crates etc., is extraordinary. It’s little touches like e.g. a table that doesn’t have one chair cut-copy pasted, with some of them farther under it than others, that your conscious mind may not immediately pick up, but ultimately, your unconscious does. While a few assets are reused, with a carpet being a good example, the maps nonetheless achieve an attention to detail and general sense of being organic that I’d have considered to be nigh impossible to achieve with a map-tool prior to the release of Dark Obelisk II.

While some maps sport a few more of these touches than others, as a whole, the extensive cartography allows you to genuinely see the settlement in all of its details. Infinium Game Studios’ trademark excess regarding details is a rather impressive asset here. Speaking of assets: I am also particularly fond of the fact that there are translucent outlines of buildings depicted over the basement levels. In case you wondered how any GM can keep control over so many maps: Each map has its own letter-code, like DE-GL-EGE, which allows for quick and precise searching and communication between GMs and players. IN case you were wondering: These letters follow their own, simple logic: “DE” stands for “Druid Enclave”; “GL” for “Ground Level”, and “EGE” is the “Entry Gardens East”-map. Simple, easy to grasp, and actually very easy to use at the table. The secret areas of the Druid Enclave do not feature in the player’s guide, thankfully.

The final chapter deals with a ton of NPCs, sporting notes on an overview of the NPC, as well as general appearance and demeanor – these GENERALLY tend to be helpful, as they do not give away crucial details. Generally. When it comes to less savory individuals, things do become problematic. For example when it comes to the Black Market Leader, who has this very profession listed next to his name! Or take the assassin (in profession, not class), who has “(Assassin) in big, fat letters next to her name. That sort of information should be redacted in a player’s guide! Not cool! That’s the one thing that this Player’s Guide really botches, which is particularly weird, considering how the write-ups generally otherwise do a solid job avoiding spoilers. Also weird: Two of the NPCs have stunning full-color artworks; the individuals are obviously sisters, and one sister’s write-up notes that she styles her hair differently from her sister to look distinct from her. This directly contradicts how the two artworks depict them – with the same style of haircut. It’s a small thing in comparison, but it stood out to me.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are better than one would expect from a one-man enterprise that produces tomes of this size. Layout adheres to Infinium Game Studios’ 2-column full-color standard, and the hardcover sports the handy color bands on the side that let you quickly jump to the correct chapter. Cartography, as noted, is really detailed and goes the extra mile regarding player’s maps. The original pieces of artwork, mostly in b/w, provided for the NPCs is a neat plus, though e.g. seeing a rather evil/grim-looking man described as a happy stoner may at first seem odd. In dubio pro reo, though: I assume that this contrast was chosen intentionally, and it’s the exception, rather than the rule: An artwork of a heavily-tattooed one-eyed dwarven lady, in contrast, really put a smile on my face! The artworks are generally well-chosen. The hardcover sports the name on the spine, as proper.

J. Evans Payne’s player’s guide to the Druid Enclave, while structurally akin to the one presented for Dark Obelisk II, does not run afoul of the same issues: The book, for one, does not spoil mechanics of the supplement. As Druid Enclave is structurally closer to Dark Obelisk I’s Berrincorte-settlement’s depiction, it provides a player-centric overview of the vast settlement and its political structure, and does so well. While the spoiling of secret identities and functions in the NPC-section is a big no-go, it remains the only faux-pas of the supplement, and it’s one that could be explained by making it an “open secret” or by PC-connections. Oh, and then there’s the fact that this is FREE as a pdf, and I’m pretty much certain that $19 for a 200-page hardcover is at-price for printing, making this a super-fair offering. As such, my final verdict will clock in at 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The massive atlas of the Druid Enclave supplement clocks in at 312 pages of maps, already disregarding front/back end matter.

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue due to me receiving a print copy of the hardcover in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. My review is based on this hardcover.

The book sports the handy colored bands on the side, which render navigation simple; as always, the maps have their letter-codes noted, which makes finding them rather simple. This massive atlas first features the GM maps, then the player-friendly maps; the latter have been featured in the player’s guide, while the former are in the proper adventure book.

Which brings me to the central note here: This premium atlas only makes sense getting if you do not plan on getting the main Druid Enclave book. Why? Well, the primary selling proposition of the premium atlas, usually, is the massive amount of player-friendly maps, and in this instance, since the Druid Enclave is essentially a town and not an adventure area, those already are featured in the player’s guide.

The book misses a HUGE chance, in that it does not provide player-friendly versions of the secret areas redacted on the player maps. To elaborate: One thing I love about Infinium Game Studios, is that the company  properly redacts secret door “S”-indicators, trapdoors and the like properly; on the player-friendly maps, none of these are present, walls are thick, etc. The downside of this practice, though, is that there are secret areas hidden beyond those doors – and said areas only exist in the GM-map iterations. It’s one of the things that really irked me about Dark Obelisk II as well: Once the players do unearth a secret area, they suddenly don’t have a player’s map any more, and you have to use the GM-map.

The player’s guide to Dark Obelisk II only sported the maps for the initial settlement, not the mega-dungeon, which rendered the premium atlas a super-handy resource for that book, courtesy of all those player-friendly maps for the mega-dungeon; the same can’t be claimed here. If you have the main book and player’s guide, you have all the maps, and there is relatively little reason to get this, with the main draw here being that the atlas sports zoomed-in versions of some of the overview maps that were not included in the PG.

That out of the way, if you are just looking for a metric ton of full color maps, and don’t want the main meat of the supplement, then this certainly delivers. The maps, while made with a tool, are genuinely better than I’d have deemed possible with the like prior to DO II, full of details and small tidbits that make them stand out. They achieve the task of making you feel like you’re exploring  dynamic, lived-in settlement.

Now, as far as ratings are concerned, it really depends: If you plan on running Druid Enclave, SKIP THIS. You do not need this, and it literally offers only little additional value. For you, this is a 2-star-dud.

If, however, you do not plan on running Druid Enclave, then this is certainly is worth the asking price, and if you want to get an idea of the style of maps, you can download the FREE player’s guide and check those out. If you like what you’re seeing, then getting this will be worth the asking price. For you, this’ll probably be a 4-star supplement. For you, only the absence of player friendly maps for the redacted areas remains as a detriment.

There is no fair reconciling of these points of view; hence, my final verdict will be JUST for people not interested in the Druid Enclave book. For you, this is a massive array of maps for a fair price, and as such, a 4-star book.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Starfarer’s Arsenal-series clocks in at 7 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1.5 pages of advertisement, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 2.5 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

The pdf begins with some observations I found myself applauding – namely that scatterguns are not shotguns, in either functionality or concept. Based on these observations, we begin with new weapon qualities. “Double” means that the weapon has two barrels, and may be fired with a usage of 1; however, as a full action, you can unload both barrels at once, expending 2 rounds of ammo, dealing additional damage as listed by the quality. “Imposing” weapons are load, bright, and somewhat flabbergasting – as such, if you use these weapons to hit and damage a target, the target gets no AoO against you until the start of their next turn. This is very strong versus some builds, but also adds a serious tactical angle to the gameplay that I really love.

The “Shotgun” quality means that you can fire scattergun shells, which come as slugs or shot; slugs behave as kinetic weapons, but may not eb fired with using a choke. When using shot, for each range increment beyond the first, you get +1 to atk, but also -minus 1 damage PER DIE. On 0 or less, the target takes no damage at all. A shotgun can be sawed off/have a shortened barrel, or a choke. A sawed-off has a shorter range-increment, determined in 5-foot increments, minimum 5; chokes increase the range increment by 10 feet. Chokes can be removed or replaced as a standard action.

The pdf presents 5 types of shotguns, all of which come in 4 different iterations. We have assault shotguns, combat shotguns (which are automatic), hunting shotguns, riot guns (imposing) and break guns (which get double). Combat shotguns get bleed as critical effect, while riot guns get wound; hunting shotguns and break guns get knockdown. Ranges and capacity make sense for the items, the former being obviously on the low end of the spectrum, and one weapon is presented for each of the 20 item-levels. They are classified as longarms, just fyi.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, and the artwork features on the cover is neat. The supplement has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length.

Owen K.C. Stephens delivers big time here; from pricing to damage values to genuinely playing differently from scatterguns, this supplement delivers big time in its frame. This is a great little supplement, well worth getting for your Starfinder game. 5 stars + seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The second installment of the Extinguish the Sun-‘zine clocks in at 20 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial/introduction, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 17 pages, laid out in 6’’ by 9’’ (A5), so let’s take a gander!

As the introduction notes, this book is essentially a genre-port/hack that takes the LotFP-rules (Lamentations of the Flame Princess), and adjusts them to apply to the cyberpunk genre. (As an aside, if you’re like me and considered the first issue’s setting to be promising – it’s been picked up by Necrotic Gnome!) The different focus can be seen in layout, with corporate logos and warnings provided.

The supplement presents 4 new classes; The cyborg gets d8 HD, save- and XP-progression of the dwarf, and the class gets 3 skills to be divided among 5 core skills; these behave like the usual LotFP-skills, and include Guidance (which covers navigation), Knowledge, Vision mods, Math, and Strength – the latter is a bit unfortunately-named. Why not call it “Feats of Strength”, “Muscles” or some such to avoid confusion between skill and ability score. The Lowlife gets d6 HD, save-, XP- and skill-progression as a specialist, with two unique skills introduced: The first is Acquisitions, which represents the ability to get their hands on goods, legal and illegal products, etc.; the second skill is Offloading, which is the skill used to get rid of stuff, fence contraband, etc. These two skills start off as 1 in 6, so the base values need not be purchased. The mercenary has d10 HD, an elf’s saving throw progression, and an XP-progression of the specialist. The mercenary can get odd jobs that pay 50 bucks per day, and they pick a primary weapon from a list of 3, a sidearm from a list of 4, and a special ability from a list of 4 (Skilled, Stout, Savage, Martial Arts). With the primary weapon, the mercenary has an attack bonus equal to their level, ½ their level (rounded up) with the secondary weapon. If choosing unarmed as secondary weapon, the mercenary deals 1d4 damage with those. Martial Arts upgrades unarmed secondary weapon damage to 1d8, if present, and when the character attacks, they get +2 to Ac until their next turn. Stout upgrades HD t d12. Skills nets 4 points that can be used in specialist skills, but not the new ones of the lowlife. Savage increases the daage die caused with all attacks by one step; d12s become d12 + 1d4, just fyi.

The final class, and the only one sans a delightful b/w-artwork, would be the Phreak who gets d4 HD, save-progression as a magic-user, XP-progression as a cleric. These fellows have embedded datajacks, and can jack into the Matrix. If they take damage while jacked in, they are ejected and take additional damage. Safely logging off from the Matrix takes a whopping 10 minutes. The Matrix as envisioned here is explained in detail; its structure is that it is made up of nodes, rooms, all interconnected, a vast, sprawling digital metropolis/dungeon-crossover. Equipment must be smuggled into the Matrix via a backdoor, and costs as much in the Matrix as in real life. Matrix-use items can’t be sold. Regular characters can only take 4 items with them, while phreaks get up to 6. Additionally, phreaks get d12 HD in the Matrix, and attack bonus equal to their level. The HD of other users is contingent on skin-quality of the avatar, ranging from d4 to d10.

The pdf also presents a basic equipment list that covers both melee and ranged weapons, as well as armor. Ranged weapons do tend to inflict A LOT more damage than melee; the pdf does not state how reloading, clip-size etc. is handled, and regarding the latter, no information whatsoever is provided. Considering the damage-discrepancy, I’m pretty sure that something’s missing here.

The pdf also features a brief summary of the setting, which is pretty much par for the course: 5 big corporations  rule the world, and they all get a brief paragraph of a summary, alongside their own corporate logos. Only a job at the big 5 is worth anything – everything else renders you an outcast, as the employment card doubles as an ID and credit card. Players are either ID-less outcasts  or have the very limited freelancer cards.

The pdf closes with a brief interview featuring Daniel Sell of the Melsonian Arts Council.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting is very good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to a one-column b/w-standard with nice interior artwork by Evelyn M.; David Shugars’ layout is nifty for such a minimalist publication, and I really like Anxy’s cover art. The pdf has no bookmarks, which is a bit of a comfort detriment.

Chance Phillips’ cyberpunk hack left me exceedingly unimpressed; I’m a fan of the genre, and while the execution of what is here is decent, I don’t really see the necessity of the supplement; this is very much cookie-cutter cyberpunk without flair or novelty, and if you have ever read Neuromancer, or played 2020 or Shadowrun, you can probably improvise more complex and exciting  material. The conception of the Matrix as a dungeon stand-in is clever, but not sufficiently-realized/explained to make long-term campaigning make sense. As a whole, I’d be hard-pressed to play a compelling game with these rules, or a motivation to build on them. Unlike in the first installment, there simply isn’t much here to set this apart on either a mechanical, or narrative level. I can’t recommend this ‘zine. My final verdict can’t exceed 2.5 stars, rounded down.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The first installment of the „Extinguish the Sun“-zine clocks in at 16 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 14 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

The rules-set assumed in this supplement would be B/X, which means that it operates relatively seamlessly with Old School Essentials, my current go-to presentation on the B/X-rules.

So, this supplement assumes a kind of Mad Max-y/Tank Girl-y setting that is somewhat fantasy-post-apocalypse like; there is a subdued, slightly allegorical quality that is particularly prevalent in the environment depicted in the beginning of the ‘zine, namely the “City in Chains” – a rotting country, where the king watches from his sealed tomb, where are representatives of castes are caricatures or perversions of their erstwhile craft. The hazy notion implies that you have to want to get there, or you won’t find it, forgetting it; this dreamlike haziness is the strongest component of this write-up, for it adds a surreal aspect to the place. Chefs are blinded and have seared hands from being forced to check temperature by hand; the engineers are paranoid creators of strange weaponry, for there can only be a few, and to get a spot, you have to kill one of them; the generals rule and are decadent…you get the idea. Priesthood and taxmen are covered as well, and as a whole, we get an impression of a city rotting at the seams. It is an interesting piece of writing and setting, but one that suffers from its indecisiveness: If it is allegorical and surreal, it could go much farther and doesn’t; if it’s primarily supposed to be plausible, it feels almost like a caricature of such a place. The article was an enjoyable read, and certainly can inspire, particularly if you’re less jaded and versed in such literature or concepts than I am.

After this, we get the two new classes – both fit all relevant information on one page, and indicate with a handy scissor item that they can be cut out of a print version; the Marksman is an 8-level class with Dexterity 9 as prerequisite and Dexterity as prime requisite, who may not wear armor, but may use any weapon. The class gets d8 HD, uses the fighter’s XP-progression and (TH)AC0 progression, but sports a unique save progression. They begin play with an ancestral firearm, and may execute stunts. These must be announced before an attack roll is made, and apply a penalty to the attack. The pdf encourages making more than the 4 presented. These include doubled range at -1 to atk, save or die due to a headshot (if you roll a natural 20 only), ricochet and rapid fire. Weird: The class caps at level 8, explicitly says so, but applies the header “Reaching 9th Level” to a section that pertains to their capstone level. All in all, a decent take on a super-stripped down version of Pathfinder’s gunslinger. Okay, but doesn’t win any prizes.

The Librarian is much more interesting: This class has a prime requisite of Intelligence, but needs a minimum Wisdom of 9; it spans 14 levels and gets d6 HD; they may use any weapon, but no armor.  They use the thief’s XP-progression, but their (TH)AC0 only improves from 19 to 17 at 6th level, and to 14 at 11th level. Their “attract followers”-level is 11th; the librarians are conceptually awesome: You may not (necessarily) know how to read, but you know of the importance of books – that’s why you wear them on your body the whole time, clad in a thick coat of books that works as chainmail armor. This is a fantastic concept, well-illustrated in a one-page artwork by Evevlyn M. Downside of wearing so many book: You take double fire damage. What do you get for that? Well, at 4th level you can smell books, automatically detecting them if passing within 10 ft. of one; at 10th level, you get a 5-in-6 chance to passively notice secret doors. Their death/poison save starts off at an atrocious 16, and the other saves aren’t particularly great either. As always, HD are capped at 9th level, with further levels providing +2 HP. And yes, that’s unfortunately it. No ability to cast from the books; no papercut abilities; no paper-plane, no magical origami. Just a dude wearing books as armor. This is the biggest, almost criminal waste of an awesome idea I’ve seen in a while.

The pdf then provides a table of 9 firearms with their stats, as well as three general templates of a sort; the damage values and range seem plausible, as do the prices. While the table is concise and shouldn’t provide problems for experienced GMs, the tables also has a “Notes”-column that e.g. lists: “a, m, s, 2h, L”; particularly since quite a few GMs I know switch between rules systems frequently, getting a brief explanation here would have been prudent.

So yeah, so far, this ‘zine may have been rather underwhelming, but then comes a great reason to get this supplement for its low price: Vehicle rules that are simple and elegant. You generally don’t need to check when driving, just when attempting a special maneuver. You check by rolling 1d10 + your Dexterity adjustment versus a number that is, at the highest 10 – essentially a DC. You check a small table, which lists different numbers for going slow, medium or fast. The rows denote conditions like the area being off-road, flooded, etc.; Swerves, turns, halts and controlled skids are defined, and the vehicle engine provides stats and costs for bikes, compacts, regular and large vehicles, including #1 of seats, Hit Points, cost, base speed, etc. Oh, and they have upgrade slots! 13 upgrades are provided, which range from being solar-powered to having a mounted cannon. I genuinely enjoy this engine; it is by far the best component of the pdf as far as I’m concerned, and considering the low price point, might well warrant getting this for you all on its own. Then again, I wished the supplement had provided more upgrades, covered e.g. melee weaponry, etc. There is a lot of material that the engine could use and is missing, including suggested damage values for being run over.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good on a formal and rules-language level. Layout adheres to a two-column b/w-standard with some neat pieces of original b/w-artwork that I really enjoyed. The pdf has no bookmarks, which constitutes a comfort detriment.

Chance Phillips’ first “Extinguish the Sun”-‘zine started of in a solid manner; the  write up of the city, while not exactly novel, might be enjoyable for some less jaded people out there; I liked it well enough. However, much like the two classes, I feel it didn’t go far enough with its ideas. The classes are duds to me, with particularly the librarian’s cool concept deserving better: The increased HD over the thief doesn’t pay for the lack of reasonable stuff to do and the deadly Achilles’ heel. The vehicle rules, though? They are genuinely well-crafted. I wished there had been more of them, for if this had used one or two of its pages more to make them work, we’d have a system I’d wholeheartedly recommend. If you’re looking for the like, this will be worth the $2.00 price-tag for you; if not, then…well. Not. As a whole, I consider this a mixed bag that sports some duds, but also a fun and well-executed subsystem. As such, my final verdict will be 3.5 stars; and due to the low and fair price point, I’ll round up for this one, if barely.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This supplement clocks in at 16 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page back cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 11 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

So, what is this? Well, functionally, this is a collection of NPC allies with statblocks included. They are the named variety, so not the generic everyman’s statblocks, and the individuals make ample use of Thunderscape’s class array; if required, for example when a thaumaturge is concerned, we have the stats modified by the typically-channeled legend featured in brackets, with spirit points properly noted. Similarly, more complex rules operations are noted in brackets, which can be handy for some less experienced GMs.

We begin with Corbin Clark, who may be of Kuzark stock, though his name is that of an Arasteen native; he oddly is a staunch enemy of the concept of a rewarding life after death, but still is an ardent enemy of the wicked – a position I can relate to, and one rarely seen in TTRPG-products. Rules-wise, he is a fighter2/thaumaturge 4. Aforementioned use of brackets is somewhat inconsistent here, with the senses line noting a Perception of +8, which is the value provided for the legend; this extends to all such characters using thaumaturge legends, just fyi. The statblock is per se nice, but sports errors, like an incorrect initiative value and the magical shortswords not in proper italics in the offense section.

Next up would be Daevid, an echo bard 5/thaumaturge 4 (who ALSO draws on the warrior legend as a default), bereaved of his paladin love; a solid tragic hero. Davan Campos’ bloodline hails back to the  first Lord Protector of the Mistland Republic, he is an exceptionally driven and capable captain, a steamwright 18 who gets a new trait that allows for halved size for non-combat starting inventions. Kaera, Sorceress of the Free Cities, is at this point one of the most powerful benevolent protectors of the Coolwave Coast. Mechanically, she is a rogue 3/sorcerer 15, and while liked her background, her statblock lacks the HD lists, her AC similarly lacks the breakdown of how it’s calculated, her feats are lower case, her statblocks lists her iterative attacks, and her, build, as a whole, is VERY unfocused;  at her level, she is rather ill-prepared to face her appropriate challenges.

Magnus Arcane’s name, before you groan, is indeed a pseudonym, and the somewhat odd black sheep of the family, he’s taken to magic. His statblock (he is a universalist wizard 11) is btw. also missing HD-breakdown, AC bonus key, etc. Marek Celdyrm a level 8 thaumaturge, does not have this issue and lists the like properly. He is also drawing upon a different legend – protector, this time around; Marek is hunting a necromancer, seeking to end the family curse.  Michiko the Fox, an elven ninja, gets a ninja trick that lets her spend 1 point of ki to gain scent for 10 minutes, which is neat, but no activation action is provided; that should probably be free. Ridiculous: Know what scent helps most? Yea, noticing stuff and  tracking. Michiko has not a single rank of Survival. Her list of ninja tricks is also missing this one, and her CMD is listed as “+20”. Her weapon is incorrectly called “katana of frost” instead of frost katana, among other issues.

A mechamage of remarkable skill, Mykal the Toymaker is the lavishly-illustrated fellow on the cover, and being a friend of the fellow (a new trait that is not properly classified by trait type) makes a beginning golmeoid implant masterwork. It is odd, then, that such a potent fellow only ranks at 7 class levels. Odder still: While he comes with a doll golem, the text also mentions his dollhouse, a mobile manor house that can fit into a 30-foot-square, with rotating cannon-platforms. No, that’s NOT the doll golem. Yes, the issues in the statblocks are here as well, with CMD, among other things, being off. I really don’t get why the exceedingly cool Dollhouse wasn’t statted properly.

Nikkos Moran is fighter 5 who uses a single shortsword, not kidding; his CMB and CMD are also wrong. Most amateur players can make a better fighter. Ophelia Mimina is a bard 12 focusing on casting (no magic weapon, all defense) who erroneously lists her CMD as 13. Reinn is a fighter 3/ranger 5 multiclass, and is essentially described as a lone wanderer over whom little is known. The final NPC is Taela Dragonstar, a sorcerer 4 with the draconic bloodline, with 4 qinggong monk levels and 2 seer levels thrown in; is her build impressive when compared to what shows u at my table? Not really, but she is leagues better than  the majority of NPCs herein, and she feels like a character that could kinda happen in a game where the player focuses on making the development of the character based primarily on the story.

The pdf ends with some general advice on handling NPCs and a brief campaign framework of PCs as pseudo law enforcers in Mekanus.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are not good on a formal or rules-language level; I noticed too many discrepancies and hiccups that influence the rules. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, and the pdf sports a really neat full-color artwork. The pdf has no bookmarks, which is a comfort detriment.

The different design skills of Shawn Carman, Chris Camarata, Rob Drake and Rich Wulf are, alas, on full display here: There are a few NPCs I’d consider to be worth introducing, but from the formal hiccups to the build validity on the characters featured herein, the supplement is highly inconsistent on a mechanical level. This tendency, alas, extends to the stories as well, which range from captivating and interesting to utterly bland; unfortunately, cool complex and good builds don’t necessarily correlate in the supplement, which renders recommending this something I simply can’t do. This is not the worst NPC book I’ve seen, but it is a long shot from being fully functional or something I’d recommend to a discerning GM. My final verdict can’t exceed 2.5 stars, rounded down.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The final installment of the Legendary Planet AP clocks in at 172 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of introduction (which also contains notes on assumed power-level, etc.), 1 page ToC, 4 pages of SRD ,1  page back cover, leaving us with 161 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

As always, I was a backer of the kickstarter for Legendary Planet, but I was not involved in the creation of this book. This brings me to a big, important note: You see, the kickstarter back then barely made the funding required for this final module – and under that premise, it is exceedingly impressive to see that this not only is a full-blown module, it’s actually mega-adventure length all on its own, probably somewhere about twice to thrice the length of a regular installment. Making it thus right by the patient backers? That’s how you handle projects like this. Kudos for going all out regarding scope.

The book also comes with a ginormous Art and Map Folio. Ähem, for anyone in the industry reading this: “THE ART AND MAP FOLIO SHOULD BE INDUSTRY STANDARD.”  Apologies for the allcaps, but this really needs to happen. I’m so sick and tired of extracting art from pdfs, and with these, I have essentially a massive handout booklet. They REALLY enhance the game, are super-convenient, and just fantastic. The art and map folio this time around, btw.? 60 pages. And the artworks are stunning. Less stunning: The player-friendly maps sans labels included in the 1st,2nd,3rd and 5th installment of the AP are unfortunately missing here as well. I really don’t get why installment 4, 6 and this book’s folios were missing those, and I seriously hope that they’ll be added.

Now, as always, we do get read-aloud text and quite a lot of supplemental material for the module; the adventure is designed for 4 characters of 19th level, with 5 mythic tiers, and the module gives guidance regarding milestone advancement and Slow advancement. With the finale assuming level 20 PCs with 7 mythic tiers. The module does include the by now classic prose chapter by Chris A. Jackson.

As always, let us start by taking a look at the chapter dealing with supplemental material, to be more precise, the chapter that sports the header “BOOM” (from the feather of Jason Nelson) – the module is supposed to end with a huge bang, so we get a section on demolition by explosives. My players would love this, as throwing ridiculous amounts of explosives at problems has been a strategy of theirs whenever they get stuck…but I digress. The bombardier ranger archetype replaces Handle Animal and Knowledge (geography) as well as Knowledge (nature) with Knowledge (arcana) and Knowledge (engineering) and UMD; they reduce their proficiency list to light armor, simple weapons and explosives, and get the alchemist bomb class feature instead of favored enemy and master hunter; they also get one-half their level as a bonus to make or identify alchemical weaponry, and the bonus also applies to siege weapon aiming. The archetype comes with a custom combat style. Instead of favored terrain, 3rd level and every 5 levels thereafter yield an alchemist discovery at level-2, replacing favored terrain. Also at this level, we have an increase of the save DC of alchemical weaponry and grenades, and this DC further increases over the levels, but does have a cap and explicitly states that it doesn’t apply to bombs granted by the class feature. 4th level nets extracts with a custom list, and instead of the whole hunter’s bond/tracking and hide in plain sight suite, we get a collection of bonus feats to choose from, which allow for some amateur gunslinging and better heavy weaponry/siege weapon usage. At 7th level, we get 8 benefits that apply to grenades and alchemical weapons, which include modifying missed throws, deadman switches, dual throws, add Intelligence modifier to hit point damage (RAW to regular and splash damage), etc. – and at 11th level and every 4 levels thereafter, we can use an additional one of these benefits each round. This archetype is a complex, potent engine-hack that plays radically different than both base class, alchemist, etc. – and it makes the respective weaponry valid.

The article is supplemented by the inclusion of 4 alchemist talents that focus on using bombs under water or further delay explosions of bombs. I don’t have all my tools from office and reference materials here, but unless I am sorely mistaken, these discoveries were originally featured in the Carrion Crown plug-in Beyond the Void. The pdf also reprints Grenade Expert and Distracting Explosions  feats for your convenience (pretty sure that these two were introduced in Ironfang Incursion), and features two more that are somewhat familiar to me, but I can’t say for sure or place them: Deafening Blast adds a short-term deafen effect to bombs and grenades (no, it’s not like the Hobgoblin racial feat), and Demolitions Expert makes you deal full damage to objects etc. with bombs and alchemical items. These feats are welcome additions to the chapter, well-designed, and I liked seeing their inclusion here. Oh, and guess what: We get a whole page of incredibly densely-packed grenades, reprinting the Technology Guide’s material, but expanding it with e.g. radiation-causing grenades, dwarf star grenades, tear gas, etc. – in short, this is the grenade reference page now; construction requirements included, of course. Beyond that, we get stats for contact and remote mines, and the stats for plasma thrower and rocket launcher are included as well, so you don’t need to flip books. This also includes featuring the scatter weapon quality for your convenience.

Beyond these, we get 3 new technological items in the alien treasures section (penned by Jason Nelson and Steven T. Helt), and one new magical item. The former would be the klaven spacesuit, which features self-replicating polymer that can repair it, if provided a charge, and it does have some boosters as well as special slots that facilitate potion consumption. Nice one. The second new technological item would be the black ray pistol, which fires a ray of disruptive energy that is classified as a necromancy [death] effect that still inflicts half damage to corporeal undead. The classification here allows the pistol’s untyped damage to avoid my scorn, since [death] effects are very much something you can protect yourself from. The disintegration torc is a torus-shaped ring grenade that causes untyped damage in a very small radius burst, potentially disintegrate-ing those slain by it; it also is particularly efficient at destroying force effects. Nice. The new magic item, which is illustrated in a great full-color artwork, like the disintegration torc, fyi, would be The Unbroken Blade, which is a +4 adamantine mythic bane falchion with properly codified mythic abilities. It looks epic and is powerful indeed.

The massive adventure does contain more, though: What about, for example, the INCREDIBLY useful chapter “Adventuring in the Void” (penned by Jason Nelson, Robert Brookes and Steven T. Helt), which recaps rules for gravity, maneuvering and momentum in the void, zero-g combat (including reprints from the Aethera Campaign Setting), radiation (including a spell to ward against it), vacuum…magic in the void is properly codified…and so is surviving in the void, where we get concise rules for the devastating effects of deep space, perihelion, etc.; oh, and the supplement also provides rules for the incredibly lethal prospect of getting close to a star, which frankly only the best equipped, highest level and toughest PCs have a chance of surviving. This chapter is awesome, as it provides a handy one-stop reference for truly brutal and suitably challenging space exploration effects. Two thumbs up! GMs running this module: Study this chapter very well – it’s super useful.

The bestiary penned by Steven T. Helt and master of meticulous, marvelous monsters Mike Welham, if you were wondering, is super-sized as well: We are, for example, introduced to the naturally-psychic CR 7 Yllosans, allies of the elali, who get an aetheric variant of telekinesis and naturally light-bending bodies; the former servitor-race Kaulvrex (CR 6) with their third arm and chemical communication (and option to chemically brand targets with their tails) are also neat; the Cr ½ Erebus come with their own racial traits, which are +2 Intelligence and Charisma, low-light vision, +1 to saving throw DCs for enchantment spells and SPs, and 1/day hypnotism  as a SP if their Charisma exceeds 15; they get +1 skill per level and their limited mental connection nets them a +8 racial bonus to pass secret messages via Bluff to other members of their race. They also get a +2 racial bonus to resist charms and compulsions, and get an additional save to shake these off if they failed the initial save. Though derived from human stock, they have their own humanoid subtype, as can be gleaned from their statblock, but not their racial traits. Not the biggest fan of them due to being somewhat lopsided, but I wouldn’t flat-out disallow them in my games. The deadly CR 17 griever from the Construct Codex is reprinted here as well.

The CR 11 explosive egg-throwing Pelkrev, eyeless and derived from draconic stock, are an interesting race that can draw power from spells failing to penetrate their SR. On the slimy side of things, we have the CR 11 living nebula, which is rules-wise super-interesting: It is gaseous, but not incorporeal, and has a unique twist that changes how its grapples operate. Combined with its alien mind and fiery aura, I really liked these alien things from a monster design perspective. Need a bit more? Well, what about a frickin’ CR 20 star blight ooze that distorts light and gravity and really wrecks the range of ranged weaponry in a rather large area? It can emit exotic ability score draining bursts of radiation and also have a stunning effect with their attacks, channeling the cold of space. Delightful! At CR 16, the earth/fire elemental Diamantem are pretty much what you’d expect: With super-sharp carbon slams, immunity to fusion, etc. and light, and prismatic spray-beams, they certainly are cool. The CR 13/MR 2 locusdaemon hits with the strength of falling stars and additional attacks in full attacks; they are surrounded by an aura of gravity that pushes targets to them, and has this cool unique property that makes it always face those observing it. A clever GM can use this latter ability to rather interesting and devious effect…just sayin’…

As always, it is highly recommended that the GM reads the Gazetteer section (penned by Darrin Drader, Jonathan H. Keith and Jason Nelson) before running the module; particularly this time around, since we’re dealing with the massive Great Sphere, the dyson sphere that represents the heart of the Ultari Hegemony. The write-up also features full settlement stats for capital Atlas Prime, as well as a law enforcement table and the stats to supplement them; beyond the stats featured in the main module, we get 4 extra statblocks, ranging from CR 6 to CR 20/MR 5 – the latter being btw. The supper deadly mythic myrmidon strike wing troop. Yep, not even super-high-level PCs are safe from the power of this empire! These constructs are BRUTAL. Atlas Prime is also unique, since the Ultari have managed to tap into mythic powers and utilize them, but also taint them for others; this is represented in the super-potent Mythic Ravage disease: This affliction is a risk whenever the PCs tap into the vast powers their mythic abilities grant them, and the affliction is nigh-impossible to get rid of, and the disease bypasses even condition immunities. It is also not a simple save or suck, instead coming with 5 progressions (KUDOS!), and the affliction does properly codify attempts to deal with it. It is a really cool affliction, and genuinely made me wish for a whole book of these complex, multi-stage effects at this quality.

Now, as far as the module is concerned, the PC’s unique Morphic Nature benefit does grant them a page of benefits when it comes to handling space, including means to use mythic power to temporarily gain some Zero-G expertise; the bottom line here is, that the PCs don’t have to start from scratch regarding functionality – but considering the totality of the adventuring beyond the void rules presented, as well as the threat of Mythic Ravage. The module does throw some serious problems at the PCs – and that is GOOD. The PCs at this level have vast resources, and they SHOULD need to think how to use these resources to survive what would be literally impossible for lesser heroes. Instead of taking away or limiting their powers, the module proposes a series of persistent challenges that the PCs need to work with. That is a very good basic premise even before the module kicks off, as far as I’m concerned. Optional random encounters are presented throughout the adventure; obscure feats are printed where required; in one instance, an ambiguous verbiage of an ability referenced is clearly defined (kudos); the module warns you when you need to be even more keenly-aware of the capabilities of the PCs; the book provides the effects of upgraded mythic spells (no book-flipping to LG’s super-useful mythic books); we also get advice for handling the more scifi aspects of the genre, tech,  psychic magic, psionics – you get the idea; in short: The module is as convenient as a super high-level adventure can be.

Okay, I’ve danced around the topic for too long, let us take an in-depth look at the mega-adventure-sized conclusion to the Legendary Planet AP! Unsurprisingly, the following will contain a TON OF SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

…

..

.

All right, only GMs around? Great! So, in the last installment, the military counter-offense launched by the Ultari Hegemony was thwarted by the PCs; thus, this module begins in media res, with the PCs emerging from the Scarab Relay in hot pursuit of the Ultari, right in the middle of a cloud of blue and white gas; provided they can beat the welcome committee left. Aluum titan (CR 16/MR 1) – and that is one of the easiest encounters in the adventure. The location of the Hegemony’s home system was purged from all computers and minds, but, you know, there is the trail to the Latere Nebula, a cosmic graveyard of dead gods mined by immortal champions in a bid to end all existence. Suffice to say, that’s not just space, it’s space coterminous with the negative energy plane, aligning the nothingness of space with those of metaphysical oblivion, courtesy of the mighty Titan’s Maw wormhole.

…

Yep, that’s how this module begins. And in contrast to the defenses of the finale of the last adventure feeling a bit off for the heart of a military operations, the same can’t be said here, as the annihilator robot welcome committee adds further potential to add the ole’ “Dead” to “Dead Space. The PCs have to navigate life-consuming nebulae, survive the assault of the CR 22/MR 2 blackstar nightwave Broln. Did I mention the assault by no less than 8 (!!) of the new locusdaemons? The photo-negative appearance nebula’s black spaces slowly coalesce upon traversal into the colossal shapes of gods long slain, and before long, Arasaim, The Darkness, a nightwalker antipaladin (!!) and his undead mi-go (cosmetic niggle: B4 reference not in superscript), will attack. This THING is functionally impossible to finally destroy right now: It offers leading the PCs to their enemies, if they kill the one living this in the Latere Nebula…and considering that Arasaim respawns whenever something dies in the nebula…well…if the first combat doesn’t do it, the second, third, foruth…you get the idea. High-level haunts of dimensional instabilities tell the tale of the Maw, and Arasaim’s target? Well, that’d be Ingulnexia, advanced void creature old umbral dragon and her retinue of shadow storms, and while not mythic per se, her lair in the bones of a long-forgotten god do help even the playing field. Interesting: both vile entities provide the means to progress – dragon and nightwalker know that passage through the wormhole will lead the PCs where they need to thread, and if the PCs are VERY clever, they might even be able to avoid fighting either of the two super-powerful entities, though, per default, the module does seem to assume that the dragon will be the one slain.

Oh, and an event horizon? In case you were wondering: You better spend a mythic power right away, or it’ll destroy you irrevocably. That’s the start. The start. Know how, rather often, players and PCs tend to lose their awe before phenomena that should frighten them?  “I fall off the cliff, so what?”; “Yeah, I’ll just walk into that burning house, no biggie.” – the PCs may be now be nigh immortal and super-potent legends. But guess what? If they think they can just take traversal of the wormhole, just because they’re high level…they’ll ALL DIE HORRIBLY. As they should! This is super-deadly, as it should be; even fully buffed high-level parties will suffer and potentially risk perishing. The module notes several means of increasing their survivability, but frankly, at these levels, the PCs need to be able to handle challenges of these proportions. This is as well a place as any to note: To Kill a Star pulls no punches. More so than even previous Legendary Planet installments, this module is clearly written with a look to the vast capabilities that the PCs and players by now have. The module warns in the beginning that it is “Incredibly Deadly” – I’d agree, but in a good way. Unlike quite a few comparable high-level adventures, the challenges posed here are seriously brutal; as brutal as they need to be to represent a proper challenge for characters of this excessive power.

Anyhow, so, the PCs are up to the Hegemony’s sphere – hopefully seriously-battered, but alive…but guess what: They’ll be catapulted into a potentially deadly debris field, and beyond, high-range railgun turrets have excellent sensors…and when their sensors are triggered, the PCs will be assaulted by Klaven Draconians and their sundragon steeds! Then, the PCs will have to still breach the sphere, which may or may not be done via the sentinel tower, from which the dragoons emerge; instead of wasting space on a dungeon through which the PCs would partially curbstomp, the tower is depicted in a highlight reel kind of way, from crucial place to crucial place – however, it should be noted that, while the PCs do get to best the regular teams, there are still plenty of dangerous high-level hazards here; just because this is no apex-tier set of encounters doesn’t mean that the Hegemony’s forces can be taken lightly! With the help of an Yllosan-possessed jagladine tech, the PCs will have a means to access the hypertube network that is used instead of the relatively dangerous teleportation as a means of propulsion in the sphere. As for teleportation: Orium-laced construction limits it, and same goes for the sphere itself – and yes, the PCs will probably know as much at this point. It should also be noted that the tower contains an encounter with aforementioned griever; one that has a pretty clever and potentially lethal set-up. But back to the tubes: Beyond potentially deadly scavengers, we have a routine inspection (that can result in a CR 18 encounter…), and the PCs will arrive at a ghost nexus tower, where their capsule will temporarily crash, requiring that the PCs hold off waves of undead as well as waves of negative energy. Provided they survive all of that (hopefully they get the capsule working before a routine inspection of more dragon-riding jagladine happens…), the PCs are off to Atlas Prime!

The capital city of the Ultari Hegemony is suffused by aforementioned Mythic Ravage disease, and if you ever dealt with the supremely weird and annoying customs clearance of an intercontinental flight, picture that, but for a super-powerful evil empire, and you’ll have the entry station for Atlas Prime! With psychoactive crystal that doesn’t block line of sight or mind-affectinf effects, as well as exceedingly potent adversaries, this is a thoroughly unique angle that I’ve never seen pulled off: The PCs may be able to break through, but if they’re smart, they’ll take the infiltration route and attempt to pass the interrogation by the inquisitors. If they make too much of a hassle, they’ll well meet Xaver Brun, the CR 24/MR 3 ultari techlord. Hint: This fellow is NOT playing around. It is here at the very latest that the GM should have read the gazetteer, for the PCs, by stealth or force, need to find the safe house and reconnaissance with the yllosans here, engaging in some serious high-level research, beyond basic research, that is anything but basic, the presence of the Opus Aeterna can unveil true secrets beyond – the reasons for the sphere; the meaning of the shaft of light seemingly piercing the sun called Axis Major…

And indeed, here things become interesting: The Axis Major is not a permanent fixture, and is indeed controlled by a pair of golden crystals dubbed Egg of the Phoenix by the Opus Aeterna – a singular device, split in twain. If this artifact were removed, it would disrupt the Axis Major and render the star unstable…oh, and guess what: Near the Axis, one could theoretically even enter the star!

But this alone? Well, it would be brutal now, would it? Few would be cold enough to doom millions – and the module knows this; instead, we get the chance for the PCs to e.g. visit the onaryx and engage in their deadly, militaristic trials (culminating in a battle against mirror of opposition-like doubles; provided the PCs play their cards right, the savage onaryx agree to rise once the Last Daughter falls. The second trip to destabilize the ultari deals with the jagladine – once more, the PCs will need to prove themselves worthy – but do share the fact that the Bountiful Bowl of the Sun may well contain the Last Daughter’s essence – the jagladine can help them retrieve the item, but it will teleport back to parliament within 24 hours: The PCs need to be ready!

They will need to get to the Daughetr’s Fane and deal with the deadly adversaries and mythic immortal ichor guarding the fragment of the egg there – CR 21/MR 8, btw.! And that’s before the deadly golems and the advanced juju zombie ultari medium! Beyond those challenges, the demiplane of the creche awaits alongside the CR 18/MR 1 Seven Sons, amniotic elementals and dangerous hazards, there is Invidia Ultimi (nice nomenclature there), Last Daughter of the Ancients. CR 26/MR 10. Of course, even if the PCs triumph, the aftershocks and the arrival of a frickin’ hekatonkheires titan…

But, well, chaos wracks the sphere. If the PCs did not want to deal with the evil onaryx and jagladine, some basic troubleshooting help is provided; if the PCs did ally with them, the chaos will be pronounced – city on lockdown, etc. Factions will war – but there is more: It turns out that the sphere, the star Faa Dlan, is actually a kind of living thing; akin to a gigantic biomechanical matrix, its tubes and everything alive, it is essentially a gigantic, cosmic honey trap left by the mysterious Patrons. Retrieving the second part of the Egg of the Phoenix will require a risky gambit: While the party can attempt to enter the Axis from outside; doing so is dangerous, deadly, but the module actually does cover it.

Speaking of coverage: The module actually provides very plausible set-ups and justifications for the operation of the magical special forces task ahead, but explaining them in the review would take a page or so; suffice to say, you know how much of a stickler for internal logic I am, and I certainly was satisfied, so kudos! The operation’s default strategy will require that the PCs enter the Ultari Parliament; the PCs need to enter the parliament, find a safe haven, and trigger a spirit-conduit with their allied yllosan, launching their spirits to the far side of the dyson sphere, to the dark duplicate of the parliament, where the other half of the sun-core system is found; The system needs to be destabilized and super-powerful enemies, including Brun and an advanced thanatotic titan. Ultimately, the PCs will have the Phoenix Egg – perhaps the most powerful destructive force ever statted for PFRPG; its power scale improves in increments of 10 mythic power: Even at 0, we have 1000 force damage in a 100-mile radius; at level 11, the highest storage capacity, we have 10,000,000,000,000 force damage in a distance equating approximately 2 light years. Yes, that suffices to destroy planets by the rules. The item can absorb energy – but its true purpose? Convert mythic power into full-blown destructive potential. It takes 10 points of mythic essence to activate it; after that, it can store mythic power; its destructive potential can be unleashed by a final donation by 3+ individuals with 6+ mythic tiers at the very place where it was created – the heart of Faa Dlan.

The sun shuttle to Faa Dlan will not provide a safe journey – a sudden impact will pit the PCs against star blight and diamantem alike in a complex encounter that threatens to derail their descent; and upon arrival, more danger lurks – including the chance of getting a taste of the things to come with a CR 18/MR 2 advanced variant giant invincible feral adult solar dragon – the “LARVAL” Hydragon. Yep, “hydra-” as in many-headed, as in multiple breath weapons per round. And the foolish players thought that this was hard so far! On the way to the singularity star’s heart, the PCs have to contend with sun worms and super-potent shining children, savage inhabitants of the sun. In the sun’s heart, the PCs can see them; dark shapes, imprisoned, with power beyond measure, just short of being freed and unleashed upon a universe incapable of stopping them; the Principalities are on the verge of victory…and only the PCs can stop them. Provided they live long enough, for a creature birthed by mere influence of these things, which may even be beyond deities, is approaching. The Maws of Faa Dlan, CR 21/MR 6, a stellar 6-headed hydragon – the quantum-tunneling entity is the star’s last line of defense, and no, the good ole’ vorpal trick won’t suffice; worse, the dragon’s actions will expose the PCs to stellar plasma, radiation, and gravity – but thankfully, the PCs won’t have top beat the nigh-unstoppable killing machine, just delay it long enough to activate the phoenix egg. Depending on how well it was charged prior to detonation (PCs dying get a chance to add their mythic power to it as a last ditch effort), the PCs may actually manage to well and truly beat the Principalities and the Hegemony – but in doing so, they obviously are annihilated as well – and reborn as gods, with each getting their own…Legendary Planet! (What an amazing end!)

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good on a rules language and formal level – apart from a few cosmetic superscripts, there isn’t anything to complain about. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, and the book sports a ton of full-color artwork, much of which is brand new. The module comes with bookmarks for your convenience, and the art and map folio is a big plus. The absence of player-friendly maps is the main thing that hurts the module on a formal scale, but on the other side, the adventure is not really constructed in a manner that requires excessive cartography: With the vast mobility at the beck and call of the super-high-level PCs, this factor is less important. Unlike in the previous module, we have a less traditional structure that, in both the areas portrayed, and in the challenges posed, embraces less traditional dungeoneering approaches. Everything is presented less as a traditional dungeon, and more like the (more) free structure that high-level gameplay operates better with.

Jason Nelson, with the help of Darrin Drader, Steven T. Helt, Chris A. Jackson, Jonathan H. Keith, Mike Welham and Robert Brookes, seriously delivers. A name like “To Kill a Star” requires an epic scope; the target levels require a pitch-perfect understanding of what characters of this level can actually withstand. To give you a comparison: The final battle in my last campaign required that the PCs would be capable of dishing out damage while recovering from approximately 1,000 damage per round; that was non-mythic, mind you, and the only encounter; the PCs had time to prep, but you get my drift. PFRPG’s high-level gameplay, in the hands of veteran PCs and GMs, can be an incredibly challenging and rewarding experience, and I never expected to see a super high-level module that genuinely manages to pull off a super-deadly module, sport more than just war of attrition combats, and even push optimized mythic PCs to the breaking point. Granted it is not as deadly as I’m in the habit of scaling up, but it is the first time in a long, long time that I’ve seen an adventure get what makes high-level gameplay so rewarding in such a frankly beautiful manner.

To Kill a Star is EPIC in all-caps, with each letter the size of a skyscraper; it is indeed good enough to imho warrant running the AP all on its own. The only end-game adventure I’d put on the same level, would be the finale of the Zeitgeist AP, though the challenges posed by that AP are radically different, making a comparison between the two moot. Have your PCs curbstomped some Paizo AP finales? Did you throw optional superbosses at them before? Structurally and thematically, this is a proper and epic culmination of the AP, one supplemented by excellent material. We were patient, and the patience paid off. This is a finale worthy of an epic saga indeed.

So, are we done with Legendary Planet? No, for I’m still waiting for the big compilation books; once those show up, I’ll get back to the AP, and provide a more general “plus/minus” breakdown that focuses on what to be aware of when running it, and on the strengths and weaknesses of the individual adventures and AP as a whole.

Until then, I am left with only the task of providing my final verdict. Unsurprisingly, this gets 5 stars + seal of approval, and the book is nominated as a candidate for my Top Ten of 2019. If you are on the fence regarding the AP, getting the first module and this may well provide a great way to judge it. Oh, and even if you don’t want to run it – with some narrative work and set-up, this module will make for a phenomenal capstone for your super high-level party.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The first installment of Ætherjack’s Almanac clocks in at 2 pages – these are intended to be printed and folded in the middle, essentially providing 4 pages, with one devoted to the front-cover.

The ‘zine starts with a new background – the unemployed drive elemental: You see, in some savage spheres of the humpbacked sky, elementals are imprisoned in engines, but thankfully, you hail from a more enlightened place. You were at once licensed, bonded and insured. The possessions provided include some fractions of a mortal soul, an expired Intersphere work permit, undue overpaid traffic citations – there is a playfulness here that I rather enjoyed seeing. The Advanced skills section also is interesting – while we have 21 “ranks” of skills, the less specific ones like “Elemental Bureaucracy” and “Human Sexology” are just evocative enough in two words to spark ideas. The background also offers some directly functional advanced skills. The background also explains the 4 different pilot skills (and how to alternatively handle them) and nets you some ideas. I really liked this background.

The pdf then proceeds to present stats for apprentice, journeymental and master air/fire elementals, including mien noted, and differentiates between damage of air and fire elementals, provides some concise fluff, and mentions SR.

SR? Well, on the first page, of what would be the back cover if folded, we have the rules for engines: SR is the ship rating. For spell engines, SR is based on skill and level of the spell being cast; essentially, these engines are powered by fueling magic into them: As though casting a spell, you expend stamina, and the SR is Skill + level of the spell being thus “cast” – the verbiage here is a bit odd; just explaining the stamina cost would have been imho more prudent. Minor and major helm costs are provided.

Elemental engines have a SR based on the elemental’s Skill, and furnace-based engines always have a SR of 2, with consumption to operate for a week listed for iron, lead, semiprecious & precious metals, as well as for ultra-rare metals. What does SR do? Well, actually, the pdf doesn’t say and I so far only have #1, but I hope that future installments illuminate this for me.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and good on a rules-language level. The pdf makes fantastic use of evocative public domain art, with one piece per page; I am particularly partial to William T. Horton’s “Path to the Moon” being used on the back cover.  The pdf has no bookmarks, but it doesn’t need them at this length; it has a delightfully old-school red/mustard yellow standard version, and a printer-friendly second iteration.

In case you were wondering: Yes, this little booklet does look like Spelljammer in Troika, with the game’s trademark humor. It is a refined offering, and certainly the best file I’ve read by Ian Woolley so far – enough to make me excited for more! Aesthetically-pleasing, the supplement has but one shortcoming, and that is that we don’t really get an idea what this SR actually does, even though it seems to be important for the future installments. As such, my final verdict can’t exceed 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Legendary Worlds-series clocks in at 20 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of SRD, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 10 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

Orbiting a red dwarf star, Polaris 7 is best described as an inhospitable, frozen ball of ice, and one wracked by massive polar vortices; to make things worse, making the equatorial zone the only region habitable by any stretch of the word. The atmosphere is thin and requires supplemental oxygen for most humanoids. Why would anyone be here? Well, the answer to that, as often, is big corp – namely Polaris Industries. As an aside – this is not the 7th planet of the system; it was the seventh choice for the operation that is responsible for the sparse habitation of non-natives. The corporation found a serious amount of Tritillium deposits on Polaris 7, which is a superconductor that allows for the creation of relatively compact power plants.

The focus on the rare resource Tritillium is also mirrored in the supplemental crunch provided herein: We get stats for Tritilium Batteries as codified technological items: They hold 20 charges, and may be depleted in increments of 5 when recharging items; they may be recharged as usual, but only have a 10% failure chance when doing so. Craft DCs and cost are sensible for these, which is impressive: Since batteries are pretty much a cornerstone of the Tech Guide subsystem, tinkering with it requires the utmost care. So yeah, neat. Oh, and we do get the information for Tritillium Power plants as well – full weight, generator yield, hardness, HP, explosion, etc. These are powerful, but at 800 lbs. indeed something you can render mobile. KUDOS! One of the two feats, Tritillium Prospector, is intended primarily for NPCs and requires that you’ve mined in a proper Tritillium mine for at least 3 months; it nets you +2 to 3 Knowledge checks pertaining to mining and working Tritillium, and 1/day nets you a reroll versus a Tritillium-based trap or hazard, which, while specific, does potentially come in handy and salvages the per se not too exciting skill-boost feat. Cold-Endurance, the second feat, is basically the cold twin to Volretz’ feat that inures you to cold conditions. Not exciting, but well-executed. (Since the feat does reference those, and some of my readers do care about this as much as I do: As usual, temperatures are only provided in °F; no °C alternative is provided.)

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Prompted by the big corp Polaris Industries, the one city of the planet was constructed around the gate – and before you ask: Polaris City is a small city and gets a fully-realized settlement statblock, and one that actually has two different marketplace sections, with the better being exclusive to the corporate sector. And in case you were wondering: Polaris 7 is indeed a cold hellhole; have you played “The Outer Worlds” and marveled at the brutal late stage capitalism on full display in that game? Well, Polaris 7 came out earlier, but the corporate control over the life of the local populace is pretty much as brutal, including loans that are nigh impossible to pay back and indentured servitude running rampant. Attempts to formalize resistance and government, some sort of regulatory push, have so far been squashed by the corporation.

Polaris City is divided into 4 sectors, and comes fully mapped – somewhat to my chagrin, no player-friendly map is provided. All of the sectors are properly touched upon, and from there, we move on to the 8 (!!) factions that make up Polaris 7’s complex political landscape: We have the corporate overlords of Polaris Industries…but much to my pleasant surprise, this supplement does not dive into easy dichotomies and simplifications of corp=evil, union=good – no, this is a mature take on the complex subject matter…and the Miner’s Union may just be a tad bit worse than Polaris Industries! Good resistance fighters without a grand plan and a bad reputation, toothless, but good coalitions attempting to form a government, crime syndicates…and did I mention the raiders, or the fact that wolliped ranchers have a co-op? It’s genuinely been a while since I saw a per se classic set-up of factions and clashing ideologies has been executed this well, without jamming “x good, y bad” down our throats. While clear alignment notes are provided, the writing is nuanced enough to make clear-cut, simple solutions not feasible. Huge kudos for that.

While we’re on the subject of wollipeds – one of the new items, the wolliped wool tunic is pretty straight-forward, in that it protects against the elements, and even cold – the interesting aspect here is that is occupies the chest slot, and accounts for that in pricing. No complaints. The second item, the avalanche stone, makes an incredible amount of sense: It’s a stone that you activate, which’ll then use a modified dimension door to get you out of it…and if you are encased in ice and snow, unable to use it, it also goes off. I really like the narrative potential of this one-use item. It’s something I’d develop if stationed on an ice planet and capable of weaving magic. Nice! The pdf also contains a new spell, flash freeze, available at 2nd level for bard, sorc/wiz and witch, which is a multi-target spell that deals nonlethal and cold damage and fatigues the targets; it is per se pretty potent, particularly considering the number of targets affected, but its save does negate the nonlethal damage and fatigue. It’s a powerful spell, but not one that’ll break most sword and planet games. As a minor nitpick: Making it require indigo powder as a material component would have been an easy way to hand the GM a limiter, if desired.

What’s indigo powder? Well, it’s used to make addictive pharmaceutical Surge, which affects androids, auttaine and other characters with a significant amount of cybertech implants, making them awake and more attentive and quicker to act. However, well, it’s obviously addictive and comes with the cost of 1 Constitution and 1d4 Wisdom damage. It is a good type of pharmaceutical, in that it has a pronounced cost that makes abuse a bad idea, but it also has a sufficient bonus that means you’ll be tempted to use it. It’s also dirt-cheap and made from indigo powder, a waste-product of the process of refining Trillium, which allows GMs to potentially easily limit availability with in-game logic. The latter may seem like a small thing to you, but it really matters to me and quite a few of my readers.

Speaking of nice: The Prospector’s Basin that houses Polaris City is also mapped (alas, no player-friendly map included), and gives us overviews of the different mining sites…and their dangers. Dangers? Well, yeah, we do have a local creature that spells all kind of trouble: At CR 10 and lavishly-illustrated (not sure by whom: Simon Aan, William Henderson, Beatrice Pelagatti or Julio Rocha), the cryo-mantid is GLORIOUS: A Large mantis that shares both the cold and fire subtypes, with burning ichor and searing hot claws. And no, they are not remorhaz-like: With nasty SPs, ice-tunneling and scuttling, they feel like apex predators, and they do have an Achilles’ hell. In case you were wondering: OBVIOUSLY, the conflicting subtypes of the creature would usually contradict each other, but the vulnerability bestowed by each was changed to another energy type, while an additional weakness of similar strength was included, making the creature come out properly: The “rules value” of the subtypes was maintained. I btw. noticed no hiccups in the statblock. Great example of a critter that feels like an adapted, dangerous, magical beast.

As always in the series, we close the pdf with a series of 3 adventure hooks: All of these outline full sketches of adventures, and go beyond the usual “Go there, kill X” – I considered all of them interesting, particularly because they also provide alternate missions, in case you don’t like the primary one proposed.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good on a formal level, and top-notch on a rules level; I noticed not a single instance where I could nitpick even a single rules-relevant component. Layout adheres to Legendary Planet’s two-column full-color standard, and the original full-color artworks are great. The cartography is solid, but remains my only true niggle here – player-friendly, key-less maps would have been nice…but then again, none of the maps contain even a single SPOILER, so I’m not penalizing the book for that. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

I expected to basically get the cold mirror-image of Volretz here, and I got something infinitely cooler, pun intended. If you read as many RPG-supplements as I do, you start to expect some things. One look at the cover, for example, made me go “Oh boy, second planet in a row (after Jowchit), and this one is cold, so it gets the obligatory magical aurora borealis that was creative and cool in Jowchit, but which is boring and expected for an ice-planet; the new creature statted will be a mostly harmless herd animal that was domesticated and gets some serious trampling and charging. It’ll also probably have cold elemental creatures analogue to Volretz.” The base premise “Evil mining operation”, on paper, also is not exactly novel, so I genuinely wasn’t that excited from the premise.

I am so happy when a book proves my first impression wrong in such a consistently delightful way. First of all, the writing: Russ Brown’s vision of Polaris 7 is clearly a homage to the tropes and genre, but the execution is what makes it shine: It is consistent, but never blunt; it knows its scope and focuses with a keen edge on it; it is nuanced and clever in its execution; in short, it is pretty much the antithesis to e.g. Carsis: It base premise may sound less exciting, but its execution, from the little narrative touches to the rules-relevant components, is absolutely fantastic. Polaris 7 is a great setting that can be taken as proof that the small details, the small touches that really show how much the author cares, can elevate a supplement, can mean all the difference. I genuinely love this planet. 5 stars + seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The second Axes & Orcs Compendium clocks in at 24 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page artwork inside front cover, 2 pages of editorial, leaving us with 20 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

The back cover sports the stats for the plasmic cannon – a weapon that requires two hands to use, holds 3 charges, and ignores 2 armor; a damage table is provided, starting at 4 on a roll of 1, and escalating to 30 on a 7+, making it a very powerful weapon.

This book contains a whole new d66 table of backgrounds, Troika!’s combination of race and class, essentially doubling the available backgrounds in comparison to the core book. In many ways, Troika’s anything goes mentality, and system-inherent notion of a pretty high lethality work well in combination with this booklet, for the backgrounds herein are pretty powerful, and at times, a bit lopsided, but Troika’s system-inherent design does mean that none of these powerful backgrounds will break the game itself mechanically – particularly since the few backgrounds with a very strong slant towards one component have other potential downsides. I will note the ones I consider to be somewhat problematic. It should be noted that the pdf makes copious use of Troika’s notion of providing new advanced skills that, as a whole, tend to be self-explanatory.

I can only speak of the pdf-version of this supplement; while there was a limited edition print run of the booklet, I do not own it, and thus can’t comment on its qualities or lack thereof.

If you enjoy outrageous humor in your gaming supplements, you’ll have quite a bit of that here. Let’s take the first background, the “2.3 pounds of hallucinating pudding”; you may be a pudding; you may be hallucinating, and you have a rad, but disgusting bio-mech that looks like a normal person. Totally. You also begin with Anxiety as a possession –noting ”<This Is A Quest Item And Cannot Be Discarded Or Sold>” – which got a chuckle out of me. The second background is one of the ones that is one of the very focused and lopsided backgrounds: You can be a 1995 3/4ton pickup! Yep, a friendly compact car. You’ll have 5 Strength, 3 Drive and 2 Car Fighting…but, you know, you can’t speak. You can flash your lights and honk and stuff like that. And yes, Strength 5 may seem like overkill – until you try playing this fellow, for RAW, the communication can be…interesting! Oh, and the size, obviously… Plus, you don’t regain Stamina by resting – or eating, I assume, though that’s not specified properly; while you do come with a repair manual, but you need others to take care of maintenance. This should probably have a similar cap as healing by eating, though – as a whole, mechanically, one of my least-favorite backgrounds herein.

The book includes a Jessica Rabbit background (2D Girl in a 3D World), whose possessions include a fan-service outfit and assorted booby-traps…and you’re actually pretty darn hard to kill, like toons in the movie. There is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle background (Adolescent Anthropomorphic Assassin Animal), and there is a designated background for Biker Mice from Mars!! (As an aside, these come with customization options ranging from mechanical limb with built-in fusil to half-mask with multi-function flares.) Fan of Final Fantasy VII? Lionwolf is essentially Red XIII, who comes with 4 Brooding and 3 Hair Accessory Fighting, among other things. Want to be the Discworldian oblivious, but extremely wealthy Tourist? There’s a background for that. We have two pretty potent Transformers-backgrounds (the second, Truckbot, being the one background that is imho a bit too much regarding all the benefits it enjoys – I wouldn’t allow it in my game), a Robocop background, and if you’re a fan of Dark Souls’ Sif or the great old Okami-game’s rendition of Amaterasu, you’ll appreciate the inclusion of the swordwolf background – you get 6 Wolf, 3 Greatsword Fighting, 3 Tracking, 2 Awareness, 2 Calligraphy, 2 Run – but you can’t speak people. 6 Wolf looks like much, but functionally, it ensure you’re good at being…well, wolf-y.

Beyond pop-culture references, you can find backgrounds for being an astronaut, a cosmonaut dog (!!), an arcanotech engineer, a brain-in-a-jar (complete with 2 Obscure B-Movie Trivia and 3 Underwater Basket Weaving); cat-rabbit things, watercolor-world rabbits, cabin boys (with negative grog-drinking skill)…what about ghosts of chickens? Kitchen goblins and kobold bankers? L5ers and orcs made by magical mishaps may be found alongside a Troika-version of the Nautilium. Did I mention the orc exchange student, or the fact that you can be a space rock? No, really! Cannibal space mermaids and void squids are included alongside door-to-door salespersons – and don’t confuse a businessman with a business-slime. They’re very similar, but obviously rather different – the businessman has more equipment, but the slime has a special ability. Oh, and did I mention that you can now play a disenfranchised Lady of the Lake (Formerly Watery Tart) in search of new lands to distribute swords in? Or the fact that you can play a giant flatworm? This fellow has penis sword fighting, and I’d appreciate it if the supplement actually codified the damage to be used by that.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are okay on a formal level; on a rules-language level, the compendium is much more precise than the first compendium, and it’s more often consistent power-level-wise with Troika’s standard backgrounds than not – with a few exceptions that imho go too far, or could use some slightly more precise rules, as noted before. Layout adheres to a two-column b/w-standard with no frills, and the artworks seem to be using public domain artwork and collage-techniques, with colors added. The pdf-version sports a bookmark every few backgrounds, which made navigation simple. The pdf comes in two versions – one intended for 6’’ by 9’’ standards, and one for A5-kudos!

As noted before, I can’t comment on the print version, since I don’t own it.

Ian Woolley’s collection of backgrounds got several genuine chuckles out of me; the irreverent humor and Troika’s rules blend very well. The backgrounds are functional, fun, and run a pretty large gamut of cool tropes. Particularly if you’re into pop-culture-references in your game, this’ll deliver in spades. If you’re looking for more of Troika’s more focused weirdness, or for something more subdued, then this won’t scratch that itch, and might be distracting in some instances. All in all, I consider this a fun addition for Troika games that enjoy plenty of pop-culture references in their games. My final verdict will clock in at 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.