An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Legendary Worlds-series clocks in at 22 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 2 pages of SRD, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 12 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

A little more than one and a half millennia ago, the world of Carsis was wrecked by a cataclysm, as the rogue moon now known as the Heart of Carsis crashed into the planet, shattering the world and sending the polar regions into space, forming new moons and changing the planet’s gravity; meanwhile, the moon became the new core of the planet, absorbed into its molten core. This Armageddon reset essentially all life on the planet’s remaining 5 landmasses, and only 800 years ago, life properly returned. The pyramidal landmasses sport life all around, the tips heated by the core as the surface area is heated by the sun; the former regular moon of the planet now orbits the equator. And yes, this is illustrated by a proper map/graph, which made me smile indeed – this is one damn cool concept!

And then, things become a bit weird, as the pdf begins flat out talking about the landmasses having a distinct flavor, embodying aspects such as anger, love, hate, envy, joy, compassion, cruelty, and so on, all without an in-game context or rationale. The descriptions of the major land masses spell e.g. out that a place “embodies the struggle for life, epitomizing rebirth.” Don’t spell that out. Make it obvious from subtext, not text. A planetary opera game does indeed have room for the, as some might construe, sappy notion of applying human feelings to evolution, but it requires some finesse. And that’s just not done particularly well here. Even Guardians of the Galaxy 2 was more subtle there. The notion is also is lore-wise really weird: The pdf, for example, talks about the landmass Kerkor, embodying death and destruction, as the place where “the restless spirits of the shattering and undead seeking a home away from the vibrancy of life” have taken shelter. Undead fleeing life, instead of consuming it. This is…odd. Particularly since none of the rules of the planet support it. If Carsis had positive energy planar traits, okay, but this? It’s a stretch regarding Pathfinder’s internal logic for undead – or that of Starfinder or 5e, for that matter.

This is particularly grating, as all of these concepts are per se fine; they just are not executed with any degree of narrative finesse: The planet also gets write-ups for its moons and core and the trail left by the passage of the Heart, and one of the fragmented components, Milone, has a chaotic magic environmental rule that can increase CL and DCs hidden in the flavor text. Cool, more of that, please, and less of that “the planet may or may not have been sentient” stuff sans set-up. We also learn about the spaceport in Akeelan, the landmass, to quote the pdf: “Akeelan has come to epitomize the order necessary to rebuild a world, exhibiting great beauty within an ordered society.” See what I mean? How can a landmass be that?

The dominant species are btw. four-armed mantis-people, the Carsians (CR 7), who get gliding abilities, lunging and may execute particularly swift attacks. As a nitpick: They do not have “paws” as natural attacks – which would render their Weapon Focus feat inoperable. That should be “Claw.” There are playable race stats: Carisians get +2 Dex and Int, -2 Wisdom, proficiency with all weapons (!!) and light armor (!), neither of which should be granted by the race, +1 natural armor that scales at 3rd level and every 2 levels thereafter, darkvision 60 ft., +2 racial bonus to Acrobatics, Stealth and Perception. They start play with the mandible special ability, which is missing both here and from their monster statblock as well, gaining Lunge at 5th, sudden strike at 7th and gliding lunge at 10th level. This race gets a plethora of abilities that they should not have; universal proficiency categories are a matter of class, not race. The missing mandible ability is weird. Dumb: The player-write-up is missing not only the mandible ability absent from the statblock, it is also missing the glide ability that the 10th level gliding lunge is predicated on. Not properly functional.

The pdf comes with 5 brief adventure hooks before presenting a sample-encounter/mini-sequence of encounters, the spawning of the Grizzat, intended for 4-6 6th-level PCs; the brief encounter-section does sport read-aloud text. The encounter is basically an introduction to the Grizzat monsters, with some read-aloud text provided, but no maps. The Grizzat comes as a CR 3 threat that sports wounding attacks, but offer no other remarkable features; I am also pretty sure that there are errors in the statblock. The pdf also includes a swarm version, the CR 5 Grizzat swarm, which is per se decent, but also has a snafu in the stats.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good on a formal level; on a rules-language level, the pdf is significantly less consistent than what we’ve come to expect from Legendary Games, and sports some serious issues in power-level and functionality. Layout adheres to the two-column full-color standard of Legendary Planet-supplements, and the pdf comes with several really cool full-color artworks. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Carsis started off so cool for me: Anthony Adam begins this supplement by painting this fantastic concept of a world, where directional gravity, a recent cataclysm and the like practically demand for void-jumping, for hazards representing highly volatile evolution, for isolated eco-systems with specialized tasks! Carsis could have done pretty much everything with this amazing set-up… it is easily the strongest in the series so far. Let me make that abundantly clear: I LOVED this to bits. The author does have talent.

But what do we actually get based on that premise? Oh boy. So, we have essentially Thri-kreen with gliding wings as dominant species, with errors in stats and overpowered racial traits. Not new, but okay. However, the insect theme for a cataclysm-wracked world is somewhat unfortunate, as it results in direct comparisons with Kyoudai Games’ Thunderscape-setting Aden and the Darkfall, which is, by mere scope, automatically better off. The primary difference to Thunderscape, apart from the planet’s unique shape, would be the theme of emotions assigned to landmasses. In case you haven’t notice, I absolutely despise how this was executed.

This theme could have worked: Heck, Pathfinder has a whole magic type associated with emotions and concepts like the anima mundi, but the planet never establishes a proper mysticism, an occult lore, regarding its emotional themes. As a result of the absence of any reason, simply ascribing emotions to landmasses and evolution comes off as sappy and hackneyed at best; at worst, it contradicts how the concepts, on a metaphysical level, usually operate in Pathfinder. For me, a big part of the pdf was rather painful to read as a result, as I witnessed a great concept executed in such an underwhelming manner, furthermore severely tarnishing a set-up that had me already draw my seal from my virtual pocket.

This concept could have worked, easily; it didn’t need to be presented in such a shoehorned way; with localized planar traits, for example, this could have worked for the patchwork…

Wait.

The introductory paragraph and unique shape of the planet blinded me. Know what does this “country behaves as subworld/has a strong theme” patchwork-angle infinitely better? With special rules for lands, a reason for their differences, etc., and has a similar concept, minus planet shape? Purple Duck Games’ exciting Porphyra-setting.

Try as I might, I can’t look at Carsis as anything but a waste of an exceedingly fine planet-concept; instead of developing something befitting of the unique planet structure, it is just a mesh of Porphyra and Aden, and neither encounter, nor the flawed statblock/racial trait integrity can make up for the conceptual shortcomings due to their own issues. This is the weakest installment of the series so far, by a long shot, and the only one I’d recommend skipping, at least as is. My final verdict can’t exceed 2.5 stars, rounded down.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This massive hardcover clocks in at 378 pages of content, already disregarding front-end matter and the like – that’s the content.

This review was moved up in my reviewing queue due to me receiving a hardcover print copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased, critical review. My review is based on the hardcopy – I do not own the pdf-iteration.

This book shares a lot of its basic assumptions with the first volume, but there are also plenty of differences. We’ll begin with recapping the components that are the same. Feel free to skip ahead below, if you’re already familiar with the general set-up of these tomes.

BASICS: The first 11 pages are there to explain the peculiarities of Infinium Game Studios’ unique approach to game design. These include house rules like using reward stars, but extend beyond that: The book explains its color-coded boxes and icons, and, more importantly, the FlexTale concept of scaling: Statblocks are quadded in 4 categories: Low level (level 1 -4), moderate level (5-8), advanced (10-15) and elite (15+). The notion of quadding applies to statblocks, of course, but also to the respective individual items. This section also presents a random treasure table for use with the book.

The massive book contains a total of 47 different magic items – which does not seem like an awful lot; however, essentially, there are 4 versions for each of the items contained within; picture that like lesser, moderate, mighty and greater iterations, for example. These items sometimes adhere to linear progressions, but the respective items do not necessarily just adhere to just being a sequence of straight increases in bonuses. Each of the items also comes with a so-called “wielder” – that would be a NPC Codex-style NPC that comes with a quadded statblock as well. If the NPC sports a mount or the like, quadded statblocks for said entity are also included. As always with Infinium Game Studios, the NPCs come with cut-copy-pasted rules-texts of class features and the like to reduce page-flipping. The consequence of these inclusions is that you have a ready-made NPC to introduce the item, but on average, that’s also 3 pages, more if familiars etc. are present. The builds themselves tend to fall on the valid side of things, but do not expect to get builds that will challenge groups consisting of power-gamers or ones with a high degree of system- and optimization- mastery. Archetypes are used, but no classes from ACG (not too sad there, admittedly), Occult Adventures, Ultimate Intrigue or Wilderness are included – in short, the builds are pre-ACG.

The amount of detail featured by the items in the book goes beyond the inclusion of NPCs. We have descriptions, effects explained, and each item notes a line of whether it’s part of a synergy set…and while the book doesn’t do much with this aspect, there are items like the magister runes, which can be chained, so there is a bit more going on here than in volume 1. Quirks of ownership are also noted, though in the absence of intelligent items, these sections are not necessarily universally useful, and are included due to consistence.

On the more useful side of things, there are notes for the discovery of the respective item, a section that comments on the ubiquity of the item in question, and text that contextualizes the item in-game regarding its notoriety. The items also include oftentimes interesting notes on how the item was developed – we get brief background stories about all items. One of the most useful components of the book is the section on rumors and lore, for there are no less than 4 tables: One is the default context, the second is information gained from key NPCs, one for townsfolk with names, and one for blindly trying to obtain information. These tables further help ground and contextualize the items n the context of the game-world. The book goes beyond that: Each item also comes with VERY detailed notes on hooks for the items in relation to classes, with general hooks included as well. Furthermore, the items come with mini-quests, which are essentially quest-structure outlines. These tend to be better than most adventure sketches one can find in comparable publications.

As for the formatting of the items, the book does an above-average job at properly formatting e.g. the construction notes and the like, but in the run-on-text, the book tends to be less consistent with formatting item- or spell-references, particularly if these do not refer to the respective item in question. It should be evident at this point, that the selling proposition, and the focus of this book, is different from the usual magic item books you’d see in PFRPG or 5e.

Instead of a focus on pure rules, the majority of the content herein is devoted to the context of the item within the framework of the game world; it’s not just about the items, it’s also about how they interact with the world. The default here is Infinium’s Aquilae setting, though there are absolutely no issues integrating them into the frame of fantasy settings. In a way, the aesthetics often can apply to the context of slightly grittier settings as well, focusing on a sense of plausibility. This focus on the context and ease of integration of an item into the game changes, thus, the central focus of the book’s appeal and makes it behave differently than most comparable item-supplements regarding where the value of this supplement comes from.

/End of BASICS

Okay, now let’s discuss the content herein! We begin this book with miscellaneous items, and one in particular that I consider to be a genuinely useful and pretty darn awesome one, the concoctarium. This item is essentially a portable alchemist’s lab. Not a kit, mind you, a lab. It also provides increasing decreases of Crafting costs for items, and the higher-level iterations net you the equivalent of Master Alchemist, and, in the highest level iteration, the Instant Alchemy feat. The item is heavy (20 lbs.), but seriously, from the padded suitcase containing it? I can see characters from Van Richten to similar folks carrying these around. As a relatively affordable option, this is a true boon to e.g. alchemists in mega-dungeon campaigns, or far from civilization. This is pure gold, and I love it. The fetish of the Insali that follows, then, would exemplify perhaps the most annoying item in the entire book, bracing you rather well regarding the ups and downs of the tome. This wand is essentially the annoying detect x item. Know how divinations have a bad reputation with many GMs for being annoying, as the PCs constantly detect, like those get in the way of nuanced storytelling? Well, what about a wand that covers them ALL, with between 20 and 100 charges per day, and some of the detect spells having daily caps? The low level iteration starts off as kinda okay: At will detect magic and detect aberrations, +3/day read magic. The high level version can detect magic, aberrations, good, evil, chaos, law, poison, secret doors, undead, demons, scrying, snares and pits, thoughts. And read magic, obviously. I like the concept behind these, as a kind of magical representation of paranoid tendencies, but in actual play, you’d have to be a pretty masochistic GM to throw one of these at your players. Design-wise, it is also less interesting, being essentially an accumulation of a lot of spells in a can. Mind you, there are lots-of-spells-in-a-can items herein that are imho better – hell’s bells, for example, have quite a massive assortment of “evil” options – from inflict wounds to dispel good and mass suggestion, these offer quite a bunch of thematically-consistent tricks. Do I like them from a design perspective? Not exactly, but I can see the value these might have for some games, and the bell weighs 140 frickin’ pounds! That is genuinely interesting. I mean, I can see PCs and adversaries alike thinking about how to carry these around, and I can picture an evil “bell warden” barbarian carrying one around for his overlord. It’s a small touch, but it is an interesting one that elevates the item.

Thankfully, the book has more to offer – what about the harp of infinite melodies, which nets you more bard spells known and more bard spells per day, as well as some properly codified bonuses? As a whole, I enjoy this one, though the additional spells require a Performance check versus DC 15 + spell’s level to access, which is just busywork rolling. I mean, come on, which bard beyond the lowest levels won’t be able to make this check every damn time? I can see this work at low levels, but the higher level iterations make this check busywork. The beautifully-drawn harp of sorrows is another instrument enhancing your bardic prowess, and features scaling sonic-based abilities, as well as a damage-increase for sonic effects. Magister runes are runes captured in crystal, which allow you to duplicate a variety of symbols, and which, as mentioned before, can theoretically be combined with each other.

So, all cool? Not always. Take the razor crystal – this item per se is interesting, in that it is an ingredient for e.g. alchemist bombs and other alchemical processes – a consumable, an additive, though this could be spelled out more explicitly. (Btw.: It should be handled with protective gear – it is sharp!) I like the item per se, with one exception: They note: “+30% radius of area of effect results from all Alchemy creations.” Does this extend to Craft (alchemy)? Rounded up or down to the next 5-foot-increment? No real clue. This does not render the item unusable, mind you – it just feels a bit clunky. On the plus side, an amulet that helps you stabilize and nets you diagnostic spell uses? Yeah, sure, why not. Some of these items also, theme-wise, tie into being kinda akin to components – like the stone/earth/petrification-themed abilities bestowed by gorgon teeth. These might not be necessarily super interesting regarding their abilities, but the context makes them stand out. What do I mean by this? The lore of the item makes their genesis founded in a kind of magical freezing of ailing people, like a strange variant of cryogenic freezing. That’s a genuinely interesting angle right there.

There are also items here that leave me kind of ambivalent: Dreadslime webs are one-use items that duplicate the web spell and add negative energy damage and debuffs to the fray. I like them, though their debuffing can be brutal. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel that these would have made sense as weapons, instead of their current iteration. This, however, is admittedly a personal preference. Still, as a whole, this section delivered more consistently and in a more interesting manner than the entirety of the first book.

I fully admit to not exactly looking forward to the weapons covered in this book, as the first volume had many of its more pronounced design issues in the armor section; thankfully, the weapon-section is much better than the armor-section in the previous book. For one, the categorization of items regarding their enhancement bonuses is more consistent. On the other hand, the items also tend to do more interesting things. Not all of them, mind you, but to give you an example: Bludgeondarts not only deal more damage, they also add essentially the good ole’ Bigby hand spells (minus the WotC-iP, obviously – we’re talking Pathfinder here). This makes the dart (!!) actually useful, and there is a chance they may be reused. Nice. The focus on lore an in-game context can also be seen rather well with the bonespike - a cool-looking spear that increases its damage and adds debuffs, particularly on critical hits, versus vertebrate enemies.

Not all items are suitable for all campaigns: The blackhatch sabre would, for example, be an item that should be kept out of the hands of players with a more pronounced degree of system mastery. The weapon enhances bull rushes greatly, which is still fine and dandy. Up to +8 to critical hit confirmation rolls, though? OUCH. That being said, for each such instance, I can also point to e.g. a dagger made from an outsider’s pseudopod, with acid and poisonous abilities. I like this. A scythe with plenty of death related abilities on crits? Ouch! There are some neat angles here. A formal issue that may or may not be relevant to you: The write-up of the weapons does not classify them as the weapon type, which is relevant for proficiencies. Let’s take the pseudopod item – you’ll have to read the text and check the “additional ingredients” list to deduce the weapon type. The latter is btw. worth mentioning, for these can act in a way as ingredient lists. I really like that, as it grounds the items somewhat. And still “Counts as a +4 weapon” is technically not PFRPG rules-syntax, and is kinda bass-ackwards. This is particularly weird, considering that e.g. fingerblades (you know, those hardcore edgelord goth/black metal finger-rings, with a blade added to the front – and yes, I own a whole array of those, minus blades, obviously) are actually properly classified. I really like these, and there is more than one of these included in the book.

Potent bows and arrows for evil snipers can be found alongside lethal bone garrotes, which provide not only the required feats, but also suffocate you and may animate you from the dead, adding insult to injury for foes vanquished. These are btw. also correctly typified as mundane weaponry. Indeed, GMs and antiheroes will have quite a few potent items herein that tie in strongly with Aquilae’s lore – several items herein are based on the Dark Obelisks – from ioun stone like shards to obelisk mote bolts or obelisk shard swords. The latter force you to take the worse of the Fort- or Will-saves when hit, or be subject to an increasing array of crippling negative conditions. In the highest power-level, that’d be shaken, exhausted, staggered and frightened. Yep, that’s 4 saves, using, quite possibly, your bad save. Ouch. (This also contradicts the item’s text, which notes that the target gets to choose the saving throw used – which is it?) The item’s highest level iteration is also a longsword +4, inflicts an additional +4d8 negative energy damage to lawful targets, and 5/day, you can affect targets struck by chaos hammer, 3/day by bestow curse, and 1/day harm. These should specify their actions. And yes, that’s in addition to the previous save array. Priced at? 102,000 GP. There is no limit to the conditions caused, just for the added spell-like effects. You don’t have to be super familiar with PFRPG to note that this is an insanely strong item. A single hit can seriously neuter a target with bad luck for several rounds, and comparable items and effects usually have a “once you’ve saved, you’re immune to the effects for 24 hours”-caveat. These swords are essentially artifacts and, in Aquilae, they are associated with the devastating Dark Obelisks; the way they’re presented, though, and their pricing? Those are not ideal, to say the least. I challenge you to find a non-artifact weapon that is more powerful for the price. While pricing throughout the book is better than in the first one, these obelisk items tend to be seriously off.

Want another example of pricing being seriously off, one not based on something with serious in-game lore ramifications/context? Let’s take the scytheknife. It is essentially a dagger-like weapon, that starts off as a +1 weapon [sic!] that inflicts +1d6 bleed damage per hit, +2d6 bleed damage on critical hits 1/day, and that is returning. Returning is the equivalent of a +1 enhancement. As for bleed damage, there is a convenient special weapon property that’ll allow for comparison, namely wounding. Wounding is the equivalent of a +2 enhancement, and adds 1 bleed damage, which stacks with itself, and may be quenched with a Heal check. A +1 returning wounding dagger would hence be the equivalent of a +4 weapon, right? That’d clock in at 32,000 gp. Compare the scytheknife: Rules-wise, the item does not specify a DC to end the bleed effect. Its minimum bleed damage is equal to the effect of wounding. Its maximum effect is equal to the effects of 6 (!!) hits with a wounding weapon, not accounting for critical hits. Granted, the bleed caused by the scytheknife does not stack with itself, but it is still vastly superior to a regular item, right? Right. So, guess what the cost to purchase this one is? 9,400 gp.

I am so not kidding you. That is btw. the version for the lowest power-level. In short: The items herein tend to be SIGNIFICANTLY better than their brethren. To the point where the construction costs and values are glaringly off. They are not just subjectively too strong, but objectively, when seen in the context of PFRPG’s well-defined rules for making magic items. The consequence is a serious drawback of the book as a whole, and one that genuinely breaks my heart: It is VERY tough to determine for which groups the items would make for valid rewards. This may be less of an issue for experienced GMs, particularly if they prohibit making these items, but it doesn’t change the fact that the items, in the context of WBL-assumptions, are often simply overpowered as all hell. It also puts a burden of serious system mastery on the shoulders of the GM when determining when and how to award the items herein. Unless you think you’re up to this task, I can’t recommend this book to you.

The book btw. closes with 4 different “artifacts”, all of which are super-powerful (and not particularly interesting) spell-in-can-items, which only behave as high-end versions of other such items. These artifacts do not adhere to Pathfinder’s usual formatting for artifacts, lacking means to destroy them, and also coming with prices and construction notes, which is generally not a notion deemed to be an option. The artifact-wielders do get proper names and full-color artworks.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are significantly better in this book than in the first tome on a rules-language level. On a formal level, the book does a good job, particularly for a one-man outfit. Layout adheres to Infinium Game Studios’ two-column full-color standard with color-coded boxes and icons – the book is easy to peruse. I can’t comment on the electronic version, but the sturdy hardcover is a pretty brutal book. The artworks for the items deserve special mentioning – gorgeous full-color artworks are provided for each and every one of them.

J. Evans Payne’s second Artifacts & Artifice book is better than the first one; there are less issues with items grafted together, weird bonus type stacking, and the like…and plenty of items herein are genuinely evocative and interesting. While I don’t like spell-in-a-can items, the sheer amount of lore and context does enhance some of them beyond their mechanics, and the book sports quite a bunch of items that genuinely made me smile.

And then there’s the elephant in the room, with the consistently botched pricing and associated power-levels. A GM not as profoundly familiar with PFRPG that introduces the items without prior checking will be pretty flabbergasted by how much they exceed the power-levels of comparable options. This, in and of itself, is a dealbreaker for many, and can seriously impact your campaigns.

And yet, I personally got some serious mileage out of the book. And yet, I can see plenty of experienced GMs out there feel the same way. If you are careful about crafting, about how accessible you make these items, you’ll get a genuinely interesting book that benefits greatly from the significant lore aspects and details provided for the items.

Whether or not this is for you thus hinges on where you place your values, your emphasis. This objectively breaks the crafting engine, big time. Like its predecessor, it has a few odd glitches…but it also sports a genuinely interesting and versatile array of items. There are less issues in this one than in the first book regarding the details, and if you disregard the pricing-issue, you won’t find an item herein you can’t use. Whether and how you use them, however, is highly contingent on your campaign and GM-style.

…and, to be perfectly frank, this is my favorite objectively broken book in quite a few years. If this had focused a bit less on spells in cans, got the pricing right, you’d see me singing unmitigated praises here. There is a singularly interesting vision underlying this tome, and even the spell-in-a-can-like items never, not once, feel phoned in or entirely unremarkable – there always is that aspect of lore, that little twist, that makes them feel more interesting than they by all accounts should.

Which puts me as a reviewer in a weird place. Mechanically, I probably should rate this 3 stars, at BEST. But as a person, I do genuinely feel that this deserves better; that, in spite of its glaring flaws, it doesn’t deserve to be called mediocre.

IF, and ONLY if you can stomach the issue regarding power-levels, if you believe you can judge them, contextualize them properly, price them and finetune their mechanics, or if you’d just disregard the whole construction/pricing-angle, then you should consider this to be a 4 stars book. That’s what this book is for ME as a person.

However, if you want consistence with established PFRPG items, if you are particular about power-levels in your campaign, then tread very carefully – for you, this is, at best, a 2.5 stars tome.

As a reviewer, though? As a reviewer, I can’t well say ”I like the items, screw the rules, love this.” I was seriously tempted to do that, but it’d be unfair towards all the magic item books I’ve reviewed over the years. Which is why my official verdict can’t exceed 3.5 stars, rounded down.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The 5e-iteration of the expanded 2.0-version of the supplement depicting the village of Feigrvidr is 15 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 9 pages of content, so let's take a look at the settlement!

If the name of this village does sound like quasi-Norse, there is a reason for that "feigr" refers to "near death" and has connotations with Odin's trances; "viðr" means wood - and indeed, this village would make a perfect addition to a mountainous region: Nestled in the headlands of the forbidding Titan Peaks, Svingal Halfbeard and his renegade band of (mostly) dwarven outcasts have tracked the flow of gold nuggets to this remote locale, ever since driving their mines into the depths of the mountains. What started as little more than an outcast's encampment in search for the big haul has since turned into a refuge for the persecuted.

Prosperous and notorious, Feigrvidr’s populace may seem rough and tumble, but there is both gold and glory to be found in this remote place. Somewhat to my chagrin, the helpful settlement statblock information present in the original iteration has been stripped here – particularly in this settlement, having it helped judge how dangerous the place is supposed to be. On the plus-side, the section that deals with life in Feigrvidr has been properly expanded, now also sporting e.g. a little paragraph on customs and traditions. On a nitpicky side of things, the dressing/event table has not been expanded as usual for the 2.0-versions: We still have 6 of those, even though the table implies that there’d be d20 of them due to a cosmetic glitch. Speaking of minor drawbacks: In 5e, we do not get a proper marketplace section of magic items for sale.

On a plus-side, the pdf of the 2.0 version does gain some serious appeal from the above-average write-up of the surrounding locality, a whole page of added content, which includes notes on demon-worshiping gnolls, among other things.

The thane's search for gold and giant artifacts continues and those that cross him tend to vanish. Whispers and rumors, a total of 6 of them, to be precise, have been included: A maze of shanties, decadent Sin's roost, halfling town and middens containing the refuse and slack of the numerous mines - the village manages to properly convey its unique take on a mining town, with 6 sample events to kick off adventures/action. As always, nomenclature and local clothing customs are mentioned.

Speaking of middens - here, a cool bit of quasi-realism blends with the fantastic, for the folk of Feigrvidr have bred challenge 2 pygmy-otyughs (fully statted!) to deal with refuse...but they tend to breed fast and true and swarms of them can be found there and the locals whisper that they also are the reason bodies of the thane's enemies tend to never be found... The 5e-statblock is mechanically correct, with my only niggle being that it only bolds two features that should both be both bolded and italics. Still: Cool critter!

In case you haven’t noticed: This village’s 2.0 version has been expanded SIGNIFICANTLY in comparison to the original PFRPG-iteration: We get 6 very detailed fluff write-ups for the crucial NPCs here, all of which go into much more detail than usual for the like, and the supplement’s final page provides 3 additional write-ups for less crucial NPCs – these are stat-less as well. Slightly odd: Raging Swan press tends to put NPCs against a grey background, but doesn’t do so on the final page. Considering that the whole page would consist of the grey boxes, this decision does make sense, and it almost certainly intentional. All of these statblocks reference the proper 5e default NPC-stats.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any serious glitches on a formal or rules-language level. Layout adheres to RSP's smooth, printer-friendly two-column standard and the pdf comes with full bookmarks as well as a gorgeous map, of which you can, as always, download high-res jpegs if you join RSP's patreon. We get pretty neat b/w-artwork. The pdf comes in two versions, with one being optimized for screen-use and one to be printed out.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland's Feigrvidr is one glorious village that can stand with the best in the series; equal parts ethnic settlement, frontier/mining town and rough and tumble refugee camp, it oscillates between various themes and blends them in a concise and fun whole. The village is inspired, cool and breathes a sense of the fantastic without becoming too "unrealistic." Much like the best of the village backdrops, this immediately inspires and makes for a great "throw the adventurers in and wait what happens"-experience.

Feigrvidr has improved significantly, and it already was a great supplement. It provides more new content than most such 2.0-expansions/revisions, and I consider this revised version to be superior in almost every way. The 5e-version has been handled with care as well, and really deserves being recommended as a 5 star + seal of approval supplement. Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The expanded 2.0-version of the supplement depicting the village of Feigrvidr is 15 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 9 pages of content, so let's take a look at the settlement!

If the name of this village does sound like quasi-Norse, there is a reason for that "feigr" refers to "near death" and has connotations with Odin's trances; "viðr" means wood - and indeed, this village would make a perfect addition to a mountainous region: Nestled in the headlands of the forbidding Titan Peaks, Svingal Halfbeard and his renegade band of (mostly) dwarven outcasts have tracked the flow of gold nuggets to this remote locale, ever since driving their mines into the depths of the mountains. What started as little more than an outcast's encampment in search for the big haul has since turned into a refuge for the persecuted.

Prosperous and notorious, Feigrvidr’s populace may seem rough and tumble, but there is both gold and glory to be found in this remote place. Somewhat to my chagrin, the helpful settlement statblock information present in the original iteration has been stripped here – particularly in this settlement, having it helped judge how dangerous the place is supposed to be. On the plus-side, the section that deals with life in Feigrvidr has been properly expanded, now also sporting e.g. a little paragraph on customs and traditions. On a nitpicky side of things, the dressing/event table has not been expanded as usual for the 2.0-versions: We still have 6 of those, even though the table implies that there’d be d20 of them due to a cosmetic glitch. Speaking of minor drawbacks: In PF2, we do not get a proper marketplace section of magic items for sale.

On a plus-side, the pdf of the 2.0 version does gain some serious appeal from the above-average write-up of the surrounding locality, a whole page of added content, which includes notes on demon-worshiping gnolls, among other things.

The thane's search for gold and giant artifacts continues and those that cross him tend to vanish. Whispers and rumors, a total of 6 of them, to be precise, have been included: A maze of shanties, decadent Sin's roost, halfling town and middens containing the refuse and slack of the numerous mines - the village manages to properly convey its unique take on a mining town, with 6 sample events to kick off adventures/action. As always, nomenclature and local clothing customs are mentioned.

Speaking of middens - here, a cool bit of quasi-realism blends with the fantastic, for the folk of Feigrvidr have bred CR 2 pygmy-otyughs (fully statted!) to deal with refuse...but they tend to breed fast and true and swarms of them can be found there and the locals whisper that they also are the reason bodies of the thane's enemies tend to never be found... Unless I am sorely mistaken, the PF2-statblock provided has an error in its constrict ability – that should be 1d6+3, not 1d6+6. In case you haven’t noticed: This village’s 2.0 version has been expanded SIGNIFICANTLY in comparison to the original iteration for PFRPG’s first edition: We get 6 very detailed fluff write-ups for the crucial NPCs here, all of which go into much more detail than usual for the like, and the supplement’s final page provides 3 additional write-ups for less crucial NPCs – these are stat-less as well. Slightly odd: Raging Swan press tends to put NPCs against a grey background, but doesn’t do so on the final page. Considering that the whole page would consist of the grey boxes, this decision does make sense, and it almost certainly intentional. One of these is a former champion with the paladin cause, and as such noted as ex-paladin; we also reference aasimar as a race here briefly, something to take note.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any serious glitches on a formal level, and only the one hiccup in the rules. Layout adheres to RSP's smooth, printer-friendly two-column standard and the pdf comes with full bookmarks as well as a gorgeous map, of which you can, as always, download high-res jpegs if you join RSP's patreon. We get pretty neat b/w-artwork. The pdf comes in two versions, with one being optimized for screen-use and one to be printed out.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland's Feigrvidr is one glorious village that can stand with the best in the series; equal parts ethnic settlement, frontier/mining town and rough and tumble refugee camp, it oscillates between various themes and blends them in a concise and fun whole. The village is inspired, cool and breathes a sense of the fantastic without becoming too "unrealistic." Much like the best of the village backdrops, this immediately inspires and makes for a great "throw the adventurers in and wait what happens"-experience.

Feigrvidr has improved significantly, and it already was a great supplement. It provides more new content than most such 2.0-expansions/revisions, and I consider this revised version to be superior in almost every way. The PF2-version is well-executed, marred only very slightly by the slight hiccup in the statblock, though not enough to deprive it of a final rating of 5 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The expanded 2.0-version of the supplement depicting the village of Feigrvidr is 15 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 9 pages of content, so let's take a look at the settlement!

If the name of this village does sound like quasi-Norse, there is a reason for that "feigr" refers to "near death" and has connotations with Odin's trances; "viðr" means wood - and indeed, this village would make a perfect addition to a mountainous region: Nestled in the headlands of the forbidding Titan Peaks, Svingal Halfbeard and his renegade band of (mostly) dwarven outcasts have tracked the flow of gold nuggets to this remote locale, ever since driving their mines into the depths of the mountains. What started as little more than an outcast's encampment in search for the big haul has since turned into a refuge for the persecuted.

Prosperous and notorious, Feigrvidr’s populace may seem rough and tumble, but there is both gold and glory to be found in this remote place. Somewhat to my chagrin, the helpful settlement statblock information present in the original iteration has been stripped here – particularly in this settlement, having it helped judge how dangerous the place is supposed to be. On the plus-side, the section that deals with life in Feigrvidr has been properly expanded, now also sporting e.g. a little paragraph on customs and traditions. On a nitpicky side of things, the dressing/event table has not been expanded as usual for the 2.0-versions: We still have 6 of those, even though the table implies that there’d be d20 of them due to a cosmetic glitch. The marketplace section provides general guidelines, but no precise items for sale.

On a plus-side, the pdf of the 2.0 version does gain some serious appeal from the above-average write-up of the surrounding locality, a whole page of added content, which includes notes on demon-worshiping gnolls, among other things.

The thane's search for gold and giant artifacts continues and those that cross him tend to vanish. Whispers and rumors, a total of 6 of them, to be precise, have been included: A maze of shanties, decadent Sin's roost, halfling town and middens containing the refuse and slack of the numerous mines - the village manages to properly convey its unique take on a mining town, with 6 sample events to kick off adventures/action. As always, nomenclature and local clothing customs are mentioned.

Speaking of middens - here, a cool bit of quasi-realism blends with the fantastic, for the folk of Feigrvidr have bred CR 2 pygmy-otyughs (fully statted!) to deal with refuse...but they tend to breed fast and true and swarms of them can be found there and the locals whisper that they also are the reason bodies of the thane's enemies tend to never be found...

In case you haven’t noticed: This village’s 2.0 version has been expanded SIGNIFICANTLY in comparison to the old iteration: We get 6 very detailed fluff write-ups for the crucial NPCs here, all of which go into much more detail than usual for the like, and the supplement’s final page provides 3 additional write-ups for less crucial NPCs – these are stat-less as well. Slightly odd: Raging Swan press tends to put NPCs against a grey background, but doesn’t do so on the final page. Considering that the whole page would consist of the grey boxes, this decision does make sense, and it almost certainly intentional.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any serious glitches on a formal or rules-language level. Layout adheres to RSP's smooth, printer-friendly two-column standard and the pdf comes with full bookmarks as well as a gorgeous map, of which you can, as always, download high-res jpegs if you join RSP's patreon. We get pretty neat b/w-artwork. The pdf comes in two versions, with one being optimized for screen-use and one to be printed out.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland's Feigrvidr is one glorious village that can stand with the best in the series; equal parts ethnic settlement, frontier/mining town and rough and tumble refugee camp, it oscillates between various themes and blends them in a concise and fun whole. The village is inspired, cool and breathes a sense of the fantastic without becoming too "unrealistic." Much like the best of the village backdrops, this immediately inspires and makes for a great "throw the adventurers in and wait what happens"-experience.

Even better, the 2.0-version of the village, in spite of the imho puzzling decision to cut the settlement statblock information, is definitely the version you should get. Why? Because it simply has so much more compelling content than the original! It provides more new content than most such 2.0-expansions/revisions, and I consider this revised version to be superior in almost every way. And yet, I couldn’t help but feel that, for this village in particular, the loss of the settlement statblock information can make it a bit harder on the GM, which is why my final verdict will hence clock in at 5 stars for the 2.0 version. Still, if you even remotely enjoy the concept, get it!

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The system neutral expanded 2.0-version of the supplement depicting the village of Feigrvidr is 15 pages long, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of advertisement, 1 page editorial/ToC, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 9 pages of content, so let's take a look at the settlement!

If the name of this village does sound like quasi-Norse, there is a reason for that "feigr" refers to "near death" and has connotations with Odin's trances; "viðr" means wood - and indeed, this village would make a perfect addition to a mountainous region: Nestled in the headlands of the forbidding Titan Peaks, Svingal Halfbeard and his renegade band of (mostly) dwarven outcasts have tracked the flow of gold nuggets to this remote locale, ever since driving their mines into the depths of the mountains. What started as little more than an outcast's encampment in search for the big haul has since turned into a refuge for the persecuted.

Prosperous and notorious, Feigrvidr’s populace may seem rough and tumble, but there is both gold and glory to be found in this remote place. Somewhat to my chagrin, the helpful settlement statblock information present in the original iteration has been stripped here – particularly in this settlement, having it helped judge how dangerous the place is supposed to be. On the plus-side, the section that deals with life in Feigrvidr has been properly expanded, now also sporting e.g. a little paragraph on customs and traditions. On a nitpicky side of things, the dressing/event table has not been expanded as usual for the 2.0-versions: We still have 6 of those, even though the table implies that there’d be d20 of them due to a cosmetic glitch. Speaking of minor drawbacks: In this system neutral version, we do not get a proper marketplace section of magic items for sale.

On a plus-side, the pdf of the 2.0 version does gain some serious appeal from the above-average write-up of the surrounding locality, a whole page of added content, which includes notes on demon-worshiping gnolls, among other things.

The thane's search for gold and giant artifacts continues and those that cross him tend to vanish. Whispers and rumors, a total of 6 of them, to be precise, have been included: A maze of shanties, decadent Sin's roost, halfling town and middens containing the refuse and slack of the numerous mines - the village manages to properly convey its unique take on a mining town, with 6 sample events to kick off adventures/action. As always, nomenclature and local clothing customs are mentioned.

Speaking of middens - here, a cool bit of quasi-realism blends with the fantastic, for the folk of Feigrvidr have bred challenge 2 pygmy-otyughs (fully statted!) to deal with refuse...but they tend to breed fast and true and swarms of them can be found there and the locals whisper that they also are the reason bodies of the thane's enemies tend to never be found... The statblock provided lists movement in feet (3’’/swim 12’’) in the small scale, lists HD and treasure types, as well as general Intelligence ratings and psionic abilities, but no morale. AC is noted only as descending, and while the special defense “never surprised” is self-explanatory, some additional elaborations on the disease special attack would have made sense. All in all, this is, by far, my least favorite iteration of the pygmy-otyugh. Even if you usually prefer the OSR/system neutral versions, it might be prudent to extrapolate your own build from the 5e or PF2-iteration, if you’re so inclined.

In case you haven’t noticed: This village’s 2.0 version has been expanded SIGNIFICANTLY in comparison to the original PFRPG-iteration: We get 6 very detailed fluff write-ups for the crucial NPCs here, all of which go into much more detail than usual for the like, and the supplement’s final page provides 3 additional write-ups for less crucial NPCs – these are stat-less as well. Slightly odd: Raging Swan press tends to put NPCs against a grey background, but doesn’t do so on the final page. Considering that the whole page would consist of the grey boxes, this decision does make sense, and it almost certainly intentional. The stats properly reference old-school classes.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any serious glitches on a formal or rules-language level. Layout adheres to RSP's smooth, printer-friendly two-column standard and the pdf comes with full bookmarks as well as a gorgeous map, of which you can, as always, download high-res jpegs if you join RSP's patreon. We get pretty neat b/w-artwork. The pdf comes in two versions, with one being optimized for screen-use and one to be printed out.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland's Feigrvidr is one glorious village that can stand with the best in the series; equal parts ethnic settlement, frontier/mining town and rough and tumble refugee camp, it oscillates between various themes and blends them in a concise and fun whole. The village is inspired, cool and breathes a sense of the fantastic without becoming too "unrealistic." Much like the best of the village backdrops, this immediately inspires and makes for a great "throw the adventurers in and wait what happens"-experience.

Feigrvidr 2.0 is a great village, and it should be noted that all my niggles are ultimately me being super picky. That being said, while I loved the inclusion of stats for the pygmy-otyugh, I was somewhat disappointed by them in this version. They do their job, but nothing more than that. And in a settlement that otherwise brims excellence, that’s a pretty big drawback. That being said, even considering that, I just can’t bring myself to round down from my final verdict of 4.5 stars here. The settlement is simply too cool. Still, if you have some experience with more complex systems, I’d recommend those iterations over this one.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Legendary Worlds series clocks in at 26 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 1/3 pages of SRD, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page advertisement, 1 page inside of back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 14 2/3 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

Jowchit is a mostly subtropical planet in relative proximity to its sun, with endless rainforests sprawling, jungles and rivers, lakes, etc. – it is a green world and sports the clearest blue sky you can find anywhere but the elemental plane of air, with the largest metropolis situated atop the Hoopaka mountain range, and vanara, garil and girallons as the major species: Speaking of which: Jowchit’s girallons are highly-sophisticated (garil), and come with a CR 9 statblock for the jowchit girallon, as well as with a write up for the garil as a playable race.

The garil are Monstrous humanoids with darkvision 60 ft., a 20 ft. climb speed and if they win you over with Diplomacy, you get a -2 penalty to resist their Charisma-based skill checks for 24 hours. They have a 10 ft. reach, in spite of being Medium, which is VERY strong (as a nitpick: sizes are capitalized) and they get a +2 racial bonus to resist enchantment (charm) and (compulsion) effects and gain an additional save one round later if they failed the first. They also get +2 Strength and Charisma, -2 Wisdom. The reach ability is rather strong for certain builds, and something that needs to be monitored for some builds, but as a whole, I am happy with these fellows. There is but one hiccup here that makes the race seem less neat than it is: The write up lists a 2 HP-line, which was probably a cut-copy-paste oversight from SFRPG (which would also explain the very strong reach, as melee is less valuable in SFRPG than in PFRPG); another indicator for this would be that none of the racial abilities sport the (Ex) or (Su) classifications that Pathfinder has for most, though not all, of these traits. That notwithstanding, the race is fully functional and should provide no issues in PFRPG. If you need to nerf the race for your game, consider granting them the Lunge feat with a limited amount of daily uses until 5th level, where you take away that delimiter. To cut a long ramble short: Not perfect, but perfectly usable.

Now, in most instances, civilization would have never managed to get past the nomad/hunter/gatherer-stage on the planet. Why? Well, Jowchit is essentially Kaiju country, sporting more than 50 of the titanic monstrosities. Only when Kongarrath, an oracle sharing a bond with the white-furred titanic kaiju resembling a girallon (see cover) Zaiz showed up, could a vision of civilization be properly realized. A curtain of lights, the Aurora Prismatica that repels most kaiju, and Zaiz were both instrumental in establishing settled civilization in this world of titanic masters. And yes, the aurora actually has a tangible mechanical effect. The book then proceeds to walk you through the mountain range known as “Bones of the World”, and in a surprising attention to detail, the massive trees of the Deep Green get game-relevant information! The Deep green, which should come as no surprise, is also an incubator for a variety of dangerous diseases, and from the glade of delirium to the ratfolk monastery and the dinosaur graveyard, this hits tones exceedingly well. The footprints of the legendary first kaiju Jira also host a variety of adventure locations, including a purple-vined island that hosts undead dinosaurs, and a weird place featuring octagonal tunnels. These locales are top-tier as far as I’m concerned – they really got my brain going regarding unique vistas and adventure ideas. Did I mention the rogue free-spirited formian bard NoOne?

Speaking of bards: The book does contain a new bard archetype, the Apostle of the Green, who replaces bardic knowledge with +1/2 class level 8minimum 1) to Knowledge (nature) checks, which may be used untrained. The archetype also gets an untyped +2 bonus to Climb checks. The skill referenced is not properly capitalized here. The bardic performance of the archetype applies to plants as well, explicitly bypassing their immunity to mind-affecting effects with their bard spells. (Kudos for keeping that properly tied to class!) When gaining new spells, these fellows can choose from the druid or ranger list – as a nitpick, I think the archetype should specify how to operate when one spell is of a lower level on the ranger’s list than on the druid list. Ideally, the higher spell level should be used, as ranger spells can be rather potent. The archetype does lose countersong for this, though. Instead of inspire competence and dirge of doom, we get the song of the green: This is a bardic performance that entangles all but caster and Wisdom bonus allies in a 30 ft.-radius, allowing them to execute some pretty consistent and potent soft terrain control – like it!

Two cities are covered as well, both providing a lot of evocative ideas, but neither have settlement statblocks. The topic of religion is also covered in detail, and we have more rules-material: The book contains three drugs: Kaiju’s Breath nets a +4 untyped bonus versus fear and emotion effects; Kajarah nets you Kaiju Link as a bonus feat for 24 hours, and Vog provides fire resistance 5. The drawbacks and addiction danger correlate well to the power-level of the benefits granted, rendering all three of them welcome additions to the game. Jowchit comes with a proper breakdown of the environmental traits of the planet regarding global rules, with temperatures noted in °F; ideally, I’d have seen a value for °C here as well.

But I was mentioning that feat, right? Well, there are 7 new feats in the book: Greensage nets you +2 to Knowledge (nature) And Knowledge (arcana), which upgrades to +4 at 10 ranks in one of the skills. That’s filler. Greensinger does not properly capitalize the skills in the prerequisite line, but lets you choose druid or ranger spells instead of bard spells – basically the feat-version of the archetype feature. While kept behind 5 ranks, I do think the existence of this feat diminishes the archetype; if in doubt, I’d cut that feat. There also is the Lore of the Great Beasts feat that nets you a +4 bonus to Knowledge (arcana) checks made on Kaiju. That’s super-specific, and should probably have some additional benefit, or a reduced bonus and be a trait. Kaiju Sense lets you 1/day per Wisdom modifier determine the direction and distance of all kaiju within 5 miles. Really cool…but technically, it should probably list a prerequisite Wisdom that actually makes sure you have a Wisdom modifier to use the feat, you know. Or a (minimum 1) caveat. Otherwise, the feat could be rendered a useless “dead feat.” Kaiju Link provides an upgrade for one kaiju chosen – you are aware of the kaiju in a 10-mile radius. Kaiju Caster lets you 3/day add +4 to CL checks to overcome SR, and if it’s from the destruction domain’s list, you increase the damage die size. Minor nitpick: This should probably note that it’s used as part of spellcasting. Craft Kaiju Power Component does what it says on the tin – and should probably have the (Item Creation) descriptor, but that’s a cosmetic nitpick. And yes, we get general guidelines for use of kaiju pieces as power components for spells, which is pretty neat!

The final 2/3 of a page provides 3 well-crafted and interesting adventure outlines , in case the inspiring text didn’t do the job yet; hint: it’ll suffice, but there most assuredly are neat ideas here as well!

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are good on a formal and rules-language level: While there are some nitpicks and issues to be found, none are truly structural issues that compromise the ability to use the supplement, with the racial traits of the garil being the one thing I can see rubbing some people the wrong way. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, with quite a few pretty awesome original pieces. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

There is a strange divide going through George “Loki” Williams’ Jowchit – on the one hand, we have a fantastic vision of a planet that makes sense, that is plausible and interesting in many ways; the GM-facing aspects of the supplement, including environmental effects, drugs, and the writing that pertains to the setting, is fantastic. On the other hand, the player-facing materials, particularly the feats and the racial stats, feel almost as though they had been written by someone else. The feats include ones that were considered to be filler back in the 3.X days (+2 to two skills – oh joy), and frankly, I didn’t like any of them, save the two that let you sense kaiju; these have a narrative justification, and can be super-rewarding, particularly if used for NPCs, or when running a campaign on Jowchit. And, like the best installments in the series, I can genuinely picture myself doing that.

Jowchit is a fantastic world, and if you’re even remotely interested in the concept, I strongly recommend getting this supplement. If you’re in it for player-facing material, you’ll be less enamored with this booklet, granted…but it’s a setting supplement, and in that regard, it’s certainly a resounding success. While the aforementioned gripes make it impossible for me to rate this booklet the full 5 stars, this does get 4 stars and my seal of approval, for this vista is both fantastic and exceedingly exciting.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This supplement clocks in at 23 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, leaving us with 21 pages of content, laid out for 6’’ by 9’’/A5, so let’s take a look!

This supplement is intended for generic OSR, and does not subscribe to a single rules-set, which can be a bit of a detriment, considering how the power-levels of e.g. B/X and OSRIC can diverge, so that’s something to bear in mind. “Skill”-like abilities are noted as x-in-6-chances, with initiative and surprise being assumed to have ascending values; similarly, saving throw bonuses are noted with plusses, with the classes doing something relatively smart, namely referencing e.g. “As clerics” as a default, making integration simple. The classes assume an ascending attack bonus.

All right, so, we begin with what I’d consider a combination of regular classes and race classes, with the halfling druid, who requires a minimum Dexterity of 9, and a minimum Wisdom of 12. The halfling druid has saves like a cleric, and weapon proficiency as a cleric or druid; armors are allowed as long as they’re made of animal or plant matter. The class gets the standard halfling abilities and spellcasting as a cleric or druid: They get +1 to attack rolls with missile weapons, as well as 5-in-6 chance to hide outdoors, 2-in-6 indoors; the class also gets +1 to initiative and surprise rolls. The halfling druid gets +2 to saving throws versus fire and lightning. Depending on the game you use, you get either access to the cleric or druid spell progression. 3rd level allows the halfling druid to automatically discern animal and plant types, as well as safe water. Starting at 7th level, the halfling druid may change their forms up to 3/day into a natural animal, The size assumed may not be smaller than a mouse, no larger than double the druid’s normal weight; the shapeshifting also replenishes 1d6 x10 percent, but doesn’t properly codify how long it takes to shift. This is a bit of an awkward mechanic, as it requires calculating percentile HP healed on the fly – fixed values would have been more elegant. It also doesn’t specify whether to round up or down. The shapeshifted form is also immune to charms and mental enchantments cast by faerie critters.

The race-class suffers from some inconsistencies between text and class-table: The first is that the text states that the class gets d6 HD every level, until 13th; the class table, however, caps this at level 9, with each additional level only yielding a single HP. The latter is obviously the correct one, but yeah. Less obvious: The text refers to 9th level as the archdruid-title, which nets a sanctified grove and followers, but the class table situates this at 10th level. As fitting in old-school games, the halfling druid notes that there are only so many druids of higher levels, which will require besting higher level druids to take their place. It would have been nice to get some information on whether this should be a separate thing from non-halfling druids. Attack bonus starts at +1, and increases by +2 at 5th level every 4 levels thereafter, which is a bit odd. As for XP-progression, we start with 2,125 XP, and twice that amount (or slightly more) for the next level – to illustrate these negligible increases beyond doubling, 7th level requires attaining 70K XP, even though 6th level takes 34K XP.

The supplement includes two different Moon-rat race-classes, the first being the moon-rat arquebusier, who needs a minimum Dexterity and Intelligence of 9 or more. They get d6 HD, with 10th level and every level thereafter granting +2 HP, and saves as a fighter. The class starts play with a +1 attack bonus, which increases by +2 at 4th level and every 3 levels thereafter, for a maximum of +9 at 13th level. Moon-rat arquebusiers get a scaling bonus to damage with successful firearm attacks, with the bonus increasing by a further +1 at 4th level and every 3 levels thereafter. The arquebusier may not use human-sized two-handed weapons or longbows, but may use all armors and weapons, and are trained in dual-wielding. One of the things that left me puzzled here: What about human-sized guns? Can these guys use them, or do they need small rifles? What is the dominant rule here – forbiddance of the two-handed weapons, or the proficiency-allowance for firearms?

Moon-rats as a whole get +1 to surprise rolls against mechanical devices, creatures or other constructs, and they get the detection abilities of dwarves of the same level. They are expert bargainers, and thus decrease the cost of purchased goods by 10%, and increase the value of sold goody by +10%. 5th level nets +1 to morale scores of retainers, and 9th level yields the usual mercenary company.

The second moon-rat class is the moon-rat machinist, who has d4 HD (+1 per level at 10th level and every level thereafter), saves, weapons and armor as a thief, and also may use firearms; being moon-rats, they have the same two-handed weapon restrictions due to their size that the arquebusiers have, and gain the same bonus to surprise rolls versus mechanical devices. They also share the same bargaining affinity. These machinists are master craftsrats and can produce or repair up to 40 gp of mechanical items per month or supervise other moonrats, with the number equal to the amount of retainers they’d have if their Intelligence was their Charisma score. They can identify mechanical items on a 4-in-6, as well as +2 to rolls to construct or repair complex machines. They get the thief’s opening locks and finding/removing traps.

And here is an issue: The class’s key feature is designing automatons etc., and the class doesn’t present rules, instead pointing you to use your OSR-game’s construct creation/spell research rules. That being said, many OSR-systems may have spell research rules, but how that works with automaton creation, well, that kinda thing isn’t really defined, forcing the GM to do the lion’s share of design here. To me, this renders the class inoperable; that’s the kind of thing I’d want such a book as this to handle. Instead of a whole class-design, we get a sketch that is easy enough to come up with, and when it comes to the hard put, the book shrugs and moves on. Attack bonus-wise, we begin with +1, and increase that by +2 at 5th level and every 4 levels thereafter. The class gains 2nd level at 1,700 XP, and doubles the required XP, with sometimes a few XP added on top; starting at 10th level, this formula changes and no longer requires doubling. Super odd: It takes 130.000 XP to attain 11th level; 12th level and every level thereafter only takes 13.000 XP. Not sure if something went wrong there.

The next class is the oil-surge relay, which is conceptually one of my favorites in the book: You are essentially a Transformer. You have d10 HD per level, an attack bonus and saves as a fighter, and need experience per level as an elf. You have a base AC as chainmail, and your unarmed strikes deal 1d4; you get the elf chances to detect secret doors and surprise checks. You begin with roughly human size, and your alternate form, the alt-mode, is the same size; your alt-modes can be a giant head, a giant weapon, a wheeled vehicle, a winged vehicle, a watercraft, a piece of equipment, an organic creature, or an animal. If you’re an organic creature in alt-mode, you are treated as a normal creature – this special case is known as a “Pretender.”

The engine presented here is interesting: The power of the class is offset by several limitations: Armor for the primary mode is 3-5 times as expensive as normal, and is destroyed if still worn when transforming. You need some sort of high-energy fuel instead of regular food and water; I like this. If you’re a Pretender, you instead require twice the usual food.

You can add a level of mass-displacement every 2 Hit Dice, but the pdf never defines what falls under a level of mass displacement – some sample references would have been helpful here. This is particularly evident, since you also get a new alt-mode every 3 levels, and may increase the primary mode’s size one level every 4 levels. This also affects the alt-modes unless you have mass-displacement for them, which implies having to assign mass displacement for them. Alternatively, you can build an extra headless body or load-bearer armor. The cost to pay for these improvements is based on XP, which is interesting. The class also specifies that you don’t automatically get to super-hack stuff and the like.

I genuinely loved this fellow, but I wished the book subscribed to a concrete OSR-system and properly focused on making the class work in that system; as far as generic OSR is concerned, this works better than I expected it to, though it still does require that you engage in some serious design in the details; it is only half done, regardless which system you use. One of the hard parts of the design is left up to you to execute.

The final regular race-class here is the sky-gnome, who needs a minimum Dexterity of 9, and a minimum Constitution of 6; they get d6 HD per level until 10th level, with +2 HP per level thereafter. They get armor proficiency as a thief, weapon proficiency as a halfling, and saving throws as a halfling. While airborne, they have a 3-in-6 chance while sky-borne to determine height, safety of maneuvers, speed, etc., and a +1 to rolls related to machinery. They also have some interesting flavor added – but are generally just not that interesting if divorced from the implied setting…and the class has no class table noted, nor does it state the experience progression the fellows are supposed to use.

The book also features monster classes, with the first being the pegataur, essentially a winged centaur, who needs a minimum of 9 in Strength, Intelligence and Wisdom. They get 1d8 HD per level, +2 HP at 10th level and every level thereafter; their attack progression and saving throws are the ones of the fighter. The class table notes an attack bonus that increases by +2 at 4th level and every 3 levels thereafter. Armor costs twice as much for them and the encumbrance are twice as high. Pegatuars may use weapons as a fighter. They have a base AC of 5 (or 15) and two hoof attacks at 1d6. They gain the elf spell progression, base movement of 180’ (60’) and twice as much while flying; we get MF & Takeoff, and carry capacity while aloft. The second level requires 4,500 XPs; weird: 13th level has a lower XP value than 12th – pretty sure that’s an error.

The second monster class is the skeleton, who gets d8 HD, saves as a fighter, and may use all armors and weapons; they have a base AC of 7 (1) – and their attack bonus increases by +1 every level. They get new HD until 12th level; second level requires 3,000 XP, and we have a roughly a doubled XP costs for a new level until 10th level, where that decreases. The skeletons get claw attacks that deal d6 damage, and they have a -2 penalty to reactions, loyalty, morale, etc.; this turns into a bonus when dealing with the undead. They have infravision 60 ft., but are treated as evil, regardless of alignment, for the purpose of spells like protection from evil etc. After the skeleton’s reduced to 0 HP, it will reconstitute itself after 10 minutes, though at the cost of a permanent loss of 1 point from a random ability score. If any reaches 0, the skeleton’s permanently destroyed. Skeletons may not be healed by lawful clerics, but can be healed by chaotic clerics. If spending 1 week or more in a safe place with materials, a skeleton can regain lost hit points, but the pdf never specifies how many hit points the skeleton may regain thus per week.

The final monster-class is the sphinx, who needs a minimum Strength and Wisdom of 9, and a minimum Intelligence of 13; the sphinx gets 1d8 HD per level, with 13th level netting just +1 HP. Their base AC begins at 5 (15) and improves up to 0 (20), which is attained at 11th level. They use saves as fighters, and barding costs 10 times the normal costs and encumbrance; they may only use natural weapons; base movement is 180’ (60’), or twice as much while flying; MF &takeoff and carry capacity are noted for flight. Sphinxes has a claw/claw/bite-routine and start at 1d4/1d4/1d6; these improve up to 3d6/3d6/2d8 at 13th level. Attack bonus increases from +1 at 1st level by +2 at 4th level, and every 3 levels thereafter. The sphinx gets their choice of either cleric or magic-user spellcasting at first level.

The sphinx also get a roar ability, and the roar has three zones (Z1-3): Those in the farthest zone (Z3) are “feared”[sic!] on save vs. spell (begins at d4 rounds, scales up to d8 turns); Z2 also requires a save vs. paralysis to avoid being stunned (1 round scales up to d8 rounds), and Z1 also requires a save vs. spell to avoid being temporarily deafened; in Z1, we have sonic damage that scales from 2d6, +1d6 at 4th level and every 3 levels thereafter – there is no save to mitigate this damage caused. The sphinx RAW has NO LIMIT on this potent roar – neither does it have notes on daily uses, nor does it specify the range of the roar. Granted the sphinx needs 5,000 XP to attain 2nd level, and roughly twice as much per level after that until 9th level, but still – this is a pretty damn potent class. In fact, the sphinx looks like it’s at home in a wholly different design paradigm; the monster classes vastly eclipse in power the other classes, and the sphinx? Well, it eclipses even the other monster classes. In lower-powered systems and games, these’ll be considered o be at the very least VERY strong; for most B/X-groups, for example, the words used to describe them would include “ridiculous”, “over”, and “powered”.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are not very good – I noticed a couple of typo-level glitches on a formal level, affect/effect, etc., and a couple of these also affected my ability to quickly parse the information within. On a rules-language level, the book does suffer significantly from not subscribing to a specific system. I also noticed quite a few ambiguities of the rules. The classes featured herein are not balanced against the core classes of pretty much any OSR-game I know, and worse, leave the hard design-components up to the GM. Layout adheres to a no-frills one-column b/w-standard, and there is a lot of blank space – one page, for example, contains a single line from the previous page’s class table, but that’s it. I liked the mix of hand-drawn and stock b/w-artworks for the classes and the DIY-aesthetics of the book. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience, and, much to my pleasant surprise, in two versions: One intended for 6’’ by 9’’ paper, one for A5 – thank you!

Ian Woolley delivers a per se promising little booklet here regarding ideas, but also one that I can’t really recommend to anyone due to its flawed execution; the ideas are here, and some are charming indeed…however, in the case of the transformer-angle, they e.g. suffer from being just a frame that requires you to do the lion’s share of design for the hard part of the race-class progression. Similarly, I loved the sphinx’s zone-based roar; it is cool, but has no range noted, and the roar’s lack of limit makes its damage outclass pretty much any OSR-class I know of.

I just don’t think this is a properly functional OSR-book; granted, this seems to have been the author’s freshman offering, which traditionally grants this some leeway, but considering how many supplements out there do so much better, my final verdict can’t exceed 1.5 stars, rounded up, considering the freshman bonus. On a plus side, the author has learned and improved since then. His more recent work is much better.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This installment of the Legendary Worlds series of supplements for the Legendary Planet setting clocks in at 22 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page of SRD, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page advertisement, 1 page inside of back cover, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 12 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

Tiny, and in close orbit to its Sun, Volretz is a glowing, scorching world, where metallic things leap from lava-like oceans of molten metal. The only solid landmasses of this foreboding furnace are situated at the poles, with transitionary areas, the so-called “Ridges” representing a surreal and dangerous ever-changing landscape of perpetually changing metal, as the “oceans” lap and cool against the landmasses, only to be molten anew. This description made me fondly recall the description of Patusan in Joseph Conrad’s fantastic novel Lord Jim regarding the struggle of mankind, but that may just be me.

Anyway, a high metal content in the atmosphere results in stunning sunsets, and a red glow remains even at night; the South pole remains a rocky wasteland, the North pole housing the only civilization of Volretz – the city of Morkansia, dominated by the Morkance Mining Copany, which pioneered a combination of magical and technological heat protection to make life and the exploitation of Volretz’ resources possible. Granted, the entrepreneur also had a hand for sabotage, which most assuredly helped retaining the monopoly on Volretz.

The city is ringed by 8 mining outposts, each manned by approximately 80 men, and 5 massive mobile mining stations sail the globe’s molten oceans. Work there is lucrative, but also dangerous – but at least there is a generous life insurance policy. It should come as no surprise that one mining station, fallen to catastrophic malfunctions, still remains on the southern hemisphere.

Morkansia is fully presented in the supplement, including fully realized settlement statblock, and a surprisingly well-executed description: From the docks and how they operate to the massive city center with its temple and ginormous foundry, the description not only deserves applause for the ideas (which include the greenbelt, a series of greenhouses and artificial water tanks tended to by divine casters with magic; a casino, etc.), but also in how plausible they make this place feel. After reading the section; I not only felt that this makes sense within the logic of the game, but also beyond that – and I could genuinely picture the planet. That’s a good sign! The city does come with a neat full-color map, though, to my chagrin, no player-friendly key-less map has been included.

We btw. get stats for the only creature native to Volretz: The Heavy Metal Elemental! No, unfortunately these elementals don’t embody the music, they embody the metals category, but they do come with a neat artwork and global rules, as well as 6 sample statblocks ranging from CR 1 to CR 11. Minor nitpicks: The statblocks, while generally very good, do sport a hiccup: The Medium version, for example, should have a CMB of +7, not +5 (its CMD and attack values are correct). As a whole, though, I liked these elementals with their forced conduction ability that makes them deadlier when exposed to fire.

Much to my pleasant surprise, we get a detailed breakdown of environmental effects, differentiating between city, northern and southern continent, and oceans – including rules for flaming hailstorms – these detailed rules are great. No complaint, but an observation: As usual in US-centric gaming, temperatures are noted in °F; these mean literally nothing to me, and I always have to remember the conversion formula, tinker with it, etc. – getting an alternate °C-value as well for the cultures accustomed to that would have been nice.

The pdf contains 4 feats: Elemental terror is a combat feat that 1/day as a swift action let you bypass an elemental’s DR/- until the start of your next turn. Other types of DR an elemental may have are reduced by 5. Cool: The feat has scaling, gaining an additional use for every 6 points of BAB. I like this, but personally, I’d grant an additional use for every 2 points of BAB – the application of the feat is already rather specific. Heat-Acclimated does pretty much what it says on the tin, but requires that you live at least one year on Volretz. Minor nitpick: One of two endure elements references in the feat-text is not in italics, but that’s a cosmetic gripe. Water Maker nets you create water as a 1/day SP, +1/day at 6th level and 12th level, with 12th level allowing you to expend all uses to duplicate geyser or hydraulic torrent instead. Ore Dowser lets you 1/day identify a single type of metal and instantly know the direction and distance of the largest agglomeration of it within a mile.

The pdf presents a new 5th-level spell for bloodrager, druid, sorc/wiz and witch, the flaming hail – neat: This spell was ostensibly created by Mortuven Morkance to fake flaming hailstorms when targeting the competition. Cool terrain control spell with damage added for good measure. I like it when magic has some concrete lore attached. Item-wise, we get two types of heat protection suits – light and heavy, both potent, yet affordable, their powers kept in check by their requirement of multiple slots. It’s a relatively simple design, but one that I enjoyed!

The last two pages are devoted to 3 adventure hooks, which deserve special mention for featuring e.g. fluff-only write-ups of a mobile mining station crew, including fire elemental deckhand, and a pretty interesting plot fully sketched out. Or what about solving the attempted murder of Ancrish Illton, the head of the Icebox Casino? These hooks are nice.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are very good on a formal level, with the rules language level only slightly behind. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, and the pdf comes with neat original full-color artworks. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience. The full-color cartography by Michael Tumey is neat, but I’d really have liked to see a key-less version of the city’s map.

Kate Baker’s Volretz made me hum Warframe’s “We All Lift Together” once more; somewhere between themes of exploration and adventure, in almost feels like a temperature-inverted fantasy inversion of tropes associated with Alaska to me. (As an aside: I have never been to Alaska – Alaskan readers, please don’t be offended, my knowledge of your home is second-hand!) There is an inherent sense of plausibility in the writing here, and a well-executed restraint: Volretz is a fantastic planet, and one that has more than one leitmotif, but it doesn’t jam too much into it, thus retaining an identity that is easy to grasp. The same goes for the supplemental material, which makes sense to be there for the planet. The execution of the supplemental material furthermore supplements this. I really liked Volretz, and have only aforementioned minor niggles and the lack of a player-friendly map to complain about…and ultimately, I felt that it wouldn’t be fair to rate this any lower than 4.5 stars, rounded up for that. This is a captivating planet well worth checking out!

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This expansion for Spheres of Power clocks in at 18 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC,1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 13 pages, so let’s take a look!

Okay, so first things first: Do you love potentially groan-inducing puns as much as I do? Then that alone will make this supplement worthwhile. The introduction does indeed set the tone wonderfully: “The Bear Sphere is an impawsible creation […] nothing could have koalafied […]grizzly old mages[…]” – you get the idea. I loved that.

But what does the bear sphere do? Well as a swift action, you can channel the spirit of the bear for 1 minute per caster level, and while you do so, you also are treated as the animal type, and get the Endurance feat; if you already have Endurance, its bonuses are doubled. Complaint here: The dual type does not specify what happens when your original type would get a benefit, and an animal a penalty – do we use whatever is more beneficial or detrimental? This needs clarification. While channeling the bear spirit, you can activate certain powers, the bearacteristics, which is a tag for bear talents, and constant benefits last until the end of the bear channeling. The base bearacteristic included in the sphere, is the option to spend a spell point as a free action when making a melee attack roll, gaining a bonus equal to ½ character level (minimum 1) to attack and damage roll. If used in conjunction with unarmed strikes, the attack provokes no AoOs. Personally, I’d have liked the bonus to be typed, but since there are ample instances of precedence regarding analogue abilities sans type, I’m okay with that.

The talent section contains 18 bearacteristic talents, and 5 without the tag; let’s start with the untagged ones: Here, we have Bear Form, as they tend to cover more basic aspects: Bear Form lets you spend a spell point while channeling the bear spirit to assume bear form, with 5th level and every 5 levels thereafter improving the benefits granted by this talent. The scaling makes sense, and the ability is properly codified in the details. Bear Smell nets you scent, or doubles its reach; Bear Speed nets you a scaling bonus to movement rate while channeling the bear spirit. Hibernation lets you spend a spell point when resting to channel the bear spirit for the duration of 8 hours. This heals you completely and rids you of non-magical poisons and diseases and you get a magical skill check to rid you of curses. This is a very potent healing option that may require some limitation in grittier games. Personally, I’d have preferred a simple scaling mechanism for healing, instead of this flat full-heal. Finally, there is Bear With Me, which lets you touch a target and spend a spell point to grant them the benefits of the channeling of the bear spirit for 1 minute per caster level. The target also gets the benefits of any bearacteristic talents, and you may spend spell points to activate them; however, bearacteristics that require an action to activate are exempt.

Okay, so what do these bearacteristics do? A Step Too Fur lets you spend a spell point as an immediate action to make a scaling are (5 ft. + 5 ft. per 5 CL) difficult terrain. Angry Bear lets you spend spell points to enter a barbarian rage for 1 round per CL, which explicitly lets you continue using Bear Sphere abilities while in this rage. Perhaps the most hilarious talent here, is the one that finally lets you realize your divinely-ordained right to bear arms: As a swift action, you replace your hands with two bite attacks, with this being a polymorph effect that explicitly does not cancel other polymorphs, and the granted attacks count as both a natural attack, or an unarmed strike, with damage dice increasing by one step every 5 caster levels. I am not a fan of them counting as both natural and unarmed attacks, as this lets you escalate attacks rather seriously – for games that sport players with serious system mastery, I’d recommend having the caster simply CHOOSE as which they count when using the talent: Functionality retained, problem averted.

Bear Necessities nets you a morale bonus equal to ½ CL to Survival checks made to forage food and shelter, which is significantly weaker than most talents here. Beary Scary nets you ferocity, Beary Hairy +1 natural armor and fire + cold resistance 2; this one may be taken multiple times, increasing its benefits. Bears Love Honey lets you spend a standard action and a spell point to heal yourself or a touched ally by 2d6 HP, with the amount increasing if you have more Bear Sphere talents. Bearer of Bad News is a language-dependent effect that lets you, as a standard action, spend a spell point to cause targets within 30 ft. to require a Will save to avoid being temporarily confused. Fursome Aura nets you a fear aura that renders targets shaken on a failed save; this is kept in check by having a hex-caveat (immunity for 24 hours if the target saved); however, there is one instance here where the rules could be tighter: One could construe that, since this can be loaned to targets via Bear With Me, that these allies have different auras. Noting that this still counts as the same aura would have been prudent. Bearbaque has, I am pretty sure, an omission: It nets you a breath attack with a cool-down, and the cooldown can be paid off by “an additional spell point”; for balance’s sake, I am pretty sure that the breath was intended to have a base spell-point cost at low levels; at higher levels, that cost could be dropped. Either way, this should be rectified.

Grin and Bear It lets you spend a spell point as an immediate action to reroll a save; Grizzly Attitude nets you ½ CL as a morale bonus to Intimidate to influence opponent attitudes when channeling the bear spirit. Paws and Reflect is activated as an immediate action and costs a spell point: When attacked in melee by a target in your threatened area, you make a magical skill check, and if the result is greater than the attack, it is redirected to the assailant. Smarter Than the Average Bear lets you use a spell point for +1d6 to a skill use. Teddy Bear is awesome: While channeling the spirit, an ally may hug you as a standard action. This allows them to reroll a saving throw against a detrimental effect that required a Will save. They may only try so once per effect. This is awesome. Think Think Think lets you spend a spell point and 10 minutes to reroll a failed Knowledge check, once per check attempt. Unbearable Rawr lets you, as a standard action, execute an AoE-demoralize, with the option to spend spell points to enhance the check. Ursine Blows is cool: When striking a corporeal target while using bear strength, you get a chance to knock the target flying.

The pdf also features 3 advanced talents: Antarctic Circle lets you use a full-round action and a spell point to draw a circle: The area inside becomes immune to bears; such targets can’t enter, and all inside are buffed; this circle maybe boosted to apply to all animals. Arctic Circle builds on that: It lets you spend an additional spell point; this attracts bears, which take a little while to arrive, but then form a troop that obeys the caster, with higher CLs upgrading the troop. In case you were wondering: We do get full stats for black bear, grizzly bear, and dire bear troops: Awesome. If you’re a fan of e.g. Chris Kutalik’s wonderfully outré Hill Cantons setting, you’ll appreciate Arm Bears: As a standard action, you can touch a bear and spend 3 spell points, granting the bear the ability to handle simple and martial weapons, as well as firearms. XD It should be noted that an alternate divination per Diviners who also have the Bear Sphere is included.

The pdf then proceeds to present 3 new archetypes, the first of which would be the barbearian, who replaces fast movement with Basic Magical training as a bonus feat, locked to the Bear sphere; otherwise, it’s the usual bonus talent. Additionally, bear sphere talents may be chosen instead of rage powers. Instead of the morale bonus to Strength and Constitution, the barbearian gains the benefits of channeling the bear spirit while raging, treating class level as CL for the purpose of benefits, but duration is always the length of the rage, and the barbearian may continue to use Bear sphere while raging. While raging, the barbearian may spend rounds of rage instead of spell points. At 11th level, greater rage is replaced with a +1 bonus to melee atk and damage, and thrown weapon damage while channeling the bear spirit. This replaces greater rage; tireless rage is replaced with a loss of fatigue, even when using Angry Bear. Mighty rage is replaced with aforementioned bonus being increased to +2.

The bearon commander replaces lingering commands with Bear sphere and Bear With Me, and the bearon gains a spell pool equal to Practitioner modifier, +1 per 2 commander levels, min 1. If the character has a different source of spell points, only the bonus spell points are gained. Class level is treated as CL for the purpose of the Bear sphere. At 2nd level and every 2 levels thereafter, the bearon gains a bonus magic talent from the Bear sphere instead of enhanced tactics, and the bearon can use Bear With Me in close range, and the bearon can grant bearacteristics that require actions to activate, and the bearon may pay the spell point cost and activation action to allow the target to activate and use the bearacteristic – I assume that the ally targeted can’t pay spell point or activation action; otherwise, this’d be pretty OP. Call in a specialist logistics ability is replaced with 4 effects: Care bears increase the effectiveness of healing; honey bears provided food and shelter, and an expert bear and a sage bear are included as well.

The child of hope druid has proficiency in simple weapons and light armor and bucklers, and may choose a martial tradition if it’s the first level. The archetype is a High-Caster and uses Wisdom as an ability score modifier instead of spellcasting, with level + Wisdom modifier spell points and blended training. Instead of nature sense, you get a bear guardian as a replacement for a regular animal companion, which still counts as such for all purposes. The character is locked into taking a bear companion with an increased Intelligence via nature’s bond. Instead of wild shape, the archetype gets a familiar at 4th level. Also at this level, the bear companion shares access of all Bear sphere talents the child of hope has and always channels the bear spirit, with durations where applicable modified to 1 minute per caster level. The bear companion uses the child’s spell points; personally, I think that this sharing does make the archetype rather nova-prone, since RAW, the bear has its own actions and does not need to be directed like a regular companion due to the increased Intelligence it has.. 10th level nets Speak with Animals, and at 16th level, a modified version of Animal Friend, which has the attitude-enhancing effects always in effect. The capstone nets a second familiar. This archetype is weird. The companion is very strong, and the addition of up to two familiars si super-weird. Not a fan.

We get a new incanter specialization that nets a bear companion akin to the one of the child of hope, ability to speak bear, and at 8th level nets 1/day, +1/day for every 4 levels beyond, as a full-round action, call the bear to your side. 11th level nets the bear the advanced template, and 15th level provides the bear SR 11 + incanter level. We also get a prodigy imbue sequence, with a neat finisher. The supplement also nets an Item Crafting option.

Beyond aforementioned bear troops, we also gets stats for the feared Multibear, who gains additional heads and arms as they age; they start with 5 natural attacks, and Bear-sphere only High Casters as well as Behemoth combat tradition practitioners. We get stats for multibears at CR 5, CR 9, 12, 15 and 19.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting is very good on a formal level; on a rules-language level, the supplement sports a few guffaws that bear (haha) keeping in mind. Layout adheres to the series’ two-column full-color standard, and the pdf sports nice full-color artwork. The pdf is fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Adam Meyers’ Bear Sphere is a hilarious, generally well-crafted supplement that is worth checking out for the puns alone. The material is focused on being useful in play, and fully functional, but is also pretty uneven in the power-level of its options. While the supplement isn’t perfect, it is certainly a fun and worthwhile expansion for the system. My final verdict will clock in at 3.5 stars, rounded up due to in dubio pro reo.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The sixth installment of the Legendary Planet AP clocks in at 100 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 3 pages of SRD, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 89 pages of content.

As always: I was a kickstarter backer of the Legendary Planet AP, but not in any way involved in the creation of this AP.

One should also note that the book comes with something amazing that should be industry standard: The book comes with an extra-pdf, a massive art and map folio that clocks in at 43 pages of content – all artwork and all maps are provided herein. I love this per se! Annoyingly, though, the art and map folio this time around is missing the most useful component: There are no player-friendly versions of the maps, which is jarring and something that should be rectified.

Structurally, the book follows the same approach as previous adventures, or the AP-formula: That is, we have a big adventure, some supplemental material, including new rules, and a well-written piece of fiction provided by Chris A. Jackson.

As always, let us take a look at that supplementary content first, with rules for advanced airships and vehicles first. As we start reading this, we learn about…Atoths? In a puzzling and glaring glitch, the flavor text of the atoths has been duplicated here as well, eating up 1/3 of the page with flavor that should not be here. As far as I could glean, this did not overwrite the intended content at least; still a puzzling oversight. The article codifies modes of propulsion by minimum tech level, and establishes three general speed categories. Toxicity and risk of propulsion are also covered, and a concise table allows you to have enough frames of reference to properly determine rules for exotic fuels, etc. 5 sample ships are provided, including a new gun. Apart from the paragraph snafu of the errant creature description, a rather neat article.

The gazetteer this time focuses on the domed city of Emirist-Tar, largest and most advanced of the city-states of Tarthos. The city gets a full settlement statblock, and we learn that both Atmospheredron and Aquadron are actually beyond the capabilities of the people here; while the city is domed, the interior of the dome is only inhabited by the upper class, with the outer plateau and mines beyond. The perimeter of the mountain is ringed by the kongrushu caves, carved out to house the draconic steeds of this caste. Society-wise, he have a transitory period that is currently emerging from feudalism, with a growing working class. All in all, this is a well-written little gazetteer that I wholeheartedly recommend the GM to read before running the module.

As always, we also have a section that features new items. This time around, we begin with the substance Orium, which can store up to 1 “psionic point” per 3 pounds. Rounded down, I assume. There is no such thing as “psionic points” – that’s supposed to be “power points”; furthermore, at the cost of weapon + 1000 gp, it is priced at the lowest tier of cognizance crystal, which is RIDICULOUS. A butchering axe weighs 25 lbs. That’s 8 power points storage for +1K gold; following the rules for cognizance crystals, this function alone should cost 20,500 GP, not accounting for being integrated in the weapon! That’s seriously broken. Cerebral collars occupy neck and head, and are a particularly vicious take on the slaver-collar trope, specifically geared towards slave soldiers. Ithosian golem armor is a prestige object usually only provided to the Queen’s Guard of Ithos, as the armor is surgically affixed to the individual, with integrated blades that can also be used as shields – pretty cool, per se, particularly since weapon AND shield function can be separately enchanted! I do have one question, though: What type of weapon are they? Do they require their own Weapon Focus, for example? What if a wearer of the armor isn’t proficient with shields, or martial weapons?

The particulate synthesizer is pretty damn cool, as it lets you generate very small quantities of artificial substances The supplement also sports rules for photon blasters, essentially blinding guns (nice); plasma javelins state “Whenever it strikes a target it ignores hardness and deals 3d6 fire damage before burning out and becoming useless, ignoring hardness of less than 20 and dealing double damage to objects with a hardness of 10 or less.” That “ignores hardness” is here twice, and oddly, the verbiage does not mention the 3d6 electricity damage here – does only the fire damage ignore hardness here? A clarification would be nice. Ultari broadswords, finally, are pretty ridiculous: They are exotic one-handed swords with a damage of 1d10 for Medium wielders, and they are better orium blades, with a storage of 1 + double enhancement bonus (should be 2 per default orium rules, but I assume that to be intentional); additionally, if the wielder confirms a critical hit, the target must succeed on a Reflex save (DC 10 + wielder’s BAB (!!) + weapon enhancement bonus or become flat-footed “until the end of the wielder’s turn.” Okay, so what if you crit on an AoO? I am pretty sure that this exceedingly powerful benefit at least at one point should have required an immediate or swift action to pull off the high-DC save to avoid becoming flat-footed. The sword costs only 2,335 gp and also sports a dual damage type, slashing and piercing. sigh This needs some cleaning up.

While we’re speaking of the Ultar: They are one of the entries in the new monsters-chapter, co-penned y Mike Welham. They can drain targets of Wisdom (kitten-proof!) and use that power to fuel their psi-like abilities and to enhance psionic powers, but not to actually manifest them. Clever. The second species herein would be the bat-like humanoids known as onaryx, whose write-up starts off with an odd section: It lists alignment, CR, Speed, etc. – so the base statistics, as well as ecology, but nothing else. Particularly weird since the alignment deviates from the one the proper statblocks all feature; any way, the sample stats provided are for CR 3, 6 and 11. The onaryx undergo a metamorphosis as they age, and behave functionally closer to how dragons do in their depiction, which explains the odd starting block. Onaryx get scaling sonic cries, which are grouped by age category. These are pretty potent and interesting and allow for a wide differentiation between them, as there are 5 categories of such cries for onaryx of ever-increasing power. Formally, one of them is missing the italics its name should have, and there’s a spell-reference missed in a disintegrate-ing cry, but functionally, they work. As damn tech-versed and capable flyers, they are interesting. Weird, though: The mature one seems to have an incorrect DC for their sonic cries, and the plasma javelins wielded by the dread and elder statblocks use stats other than the plasma javelin introduced herein. Weird inconsistency.

Beyond these, we have the primitive leaping saurian humanoids known as karn-tor and stats for the CR 7 golem conveyance, a flying thing that comes with restraining tentacles – essentially, a harvester-type construct with subduing gas, etc. Really cool! On the grotesque side of things, we have the CR 8 Ceroptor: These things are essentially a blend of grick (stingered tentacles) and penanggalan – i.e. they are heads that can pilot decapitated heads by bodying them – and yes, we get a bodied statblock. And yes, they get psionic abilities. Their unique physiology also makes them surprisingly difficult to finally get rid of if played properly. Finally, at CR 19, we have the atoth, a hideous, Large headless humanoid with a gaping maw where the head’s supposed to be; these things are incorporeal and can sense the discorporation of mortal souls from their body with a range of 1 million miles…and they have the ability to open holes in reality to the nightmare rift – a truly frightening, deadly adversary indeed. Love them…particularly since they are tied to the ceroptor species in their genesis; these two are BY FAR some of the coolest monsters in the whole AP.

Anyhow, as always for the module, we have read-aloud text for the module. The adventure begins with level 17 mythic tier 4 characters, and by the end of it, they should have level 19 and their 5th mythic tier, provided they’re using the Medium advancement track.

As always, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

…

..

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All right, only GMs around? Great! At this point, the PCs know quite a bit about the ancient progenitor race of the Patrons, and they have just dealt a crushing defeat to the forces of the mighty Hegemony, by repelling the bil’djooli invasion in an epic underwater war. The module thus begins with the PCs in a planning session with the Accord, trying to spearhead a counter-offensive into the Hegemony’s defensive position. The PCs travel to Ithos, which orbits the gas giant Qanna, an erstwhile hub-world of the Patrons, with numerous gates on the varying moons. The module begins with a bang and a mass combat against the defensive forces of the Hegemony, one interrupted when the Ithosians intervene. Highly xenophobic, their arrival seems odd – and the PCs are taken to the people’s queen; this includes some minor intrigue and trouble-shooting advice for PCs sufficiently arrogant. Due to the culture’s taboos, the PCs will have to brave the Akrot and the endless tunnel to get to the gate they’re after – but to do so, they’ll have to beat The Guardian – a brutal mythic savage golok. Getting full stats for the fellow instead of abbreviated ones would have been nice.

On the other side of the sheer endless tunnel, the PCs have a chance to crash the genetics lab of the jagladine. The traps and combat challenges here can be brutal – know how e.g. vivisectionists can become pretty nasty? Well, what about an encounter with 3 CR 14 vivis? Or one that also has a bunch of vitalist (soulthief method) levels? This is easily one of the most technical and challenging dungeons in the AP so far. Somewhat to my chagrin as a person, the usual PC tools at this level aren’t really accounted for. There are no defenses versus teleportation, for example, and the lab, apart from its potent inhabitants, is generally not defended well regarding global effects, which struck me as somewhat odd. It is understandable, considering the location and actions of the Ithosians, so it makes sense in-game, to a degree – or well, heck, perhaps the intent here was to allow the PCs to go to town on a relatively “regular” dungeon and show off their ability to shape the place.

Having torn up the dungeon, the PCs now get to use the gate to the fortress Ithos-Crin on the moon Morthos and the Hegemony’s stronghold there – provided they survive the Hegeomy’s forces in Ithos-Crin. The PCs are to contact a group of prisoners who are trying to flee the moon by means of a risky psionic ritual – on the jump to Tathos, the PCs will run afoul of aforementioned mighty Atoth. (No, psionic ritual not included, rules-wise.)

EDIT, since I should have made that clearer: The Atoth as a creature is obviously intended to punish teleportation and provide a reason for the PCs to use other venues; this is, at the very latest, made very clear in the next section, where a sidebar actually does state that mighty Atoths will come - in this section. That being said, the remainder of the module does not sport this threat, and the settings featured herein don't explicitly provide a metric beyond this encounter for when to throw Atoths at the PCs. RAW, there is no threat of them intervening beyond the first scene, so in a way, the Atoth encounter is a bluff, rather than a consistent threat, and depending on the PC builds, one that will be called. So if you have teleport/skirmishing specialists, be aware of that.

Provided they live through that, they will arrive in an ancient ruin occupied by the saurian karn-tor, who are plotting to march on the city of Emirist-Tar, the very city the PCs seek! The PCs will need to arrive at the city before things are too late, and do that through rather deadly terrain. In the city, they get to do some much welcome social roleplaying, before defending the city in an epic large-scale combat from the saurian horde. If the PCs are not killed here, they’ll still have only won a reprieve from the onslaught of the hegemony’s vast forces – and thus, another moon’s up, which is, bingo, dangerous, and houses a well-executed encounter with surprisingly creepy seers, who task the PCs to reactivate a gate on Tathos. Even in strange caverns, the Hegemony’s spies loom, and the PCs will have to brave the mighty spirits of a strange culture, requesting offerings and tests…and provided the PCs best this section, they will be off to the finale, the hollow core of the mighty gas giant Qanna, where BRUTAL ceroptor swarms await as a welcome committee. From mystic, we move to high-tech, as this is where psionics, a neat switch-puzzle, the archive of living brains and mighty general Shokar-Mar (CR 20/MR 2) await – you see, this place? It’s an ancient mobile gate! And it’s something the PCs will need if they want “To Kill a Star!”

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are neither on a formal, nor on a rules-language level as tight as usual for legendary games; on a formal level, the misplaced paragraphs, several instances of formatting snafus, missing blank spaces and the like generate an impression of a module that was somewhat rushed. On a rules-language level, we have some issues as well, particularly pertaining the new items and regarding some consistency. As noted before, the module comes with an extensive art and map folio, which is awesome. Artworks and maps are full color, with some old and new pieces used together. The cartography is full color is nice, but the lack of missing player-friendly maps, which usually are included in these modules, is another strike against the adventure.

High-level adventures are HARD to design. Extremely hard. The sheer amount of options and power the PCs have at their beck and call is brutal; plus, you need a pretty hardcore array of adversaries to challenge them. On this latter technical level, the module operates surprisingly well in play; moreover, the module provides troubleshooting advice in several instances, and uses scale, with armies clashing and PCs taking down legendary foes to drive how just how powerful they are. While pretty combat focused, the module does have social scenes and spices up things in various instances. That being said, the module, consciously or unconsciously, also presents a couple of places that operate like regular dungeons. Considering the capabilities of PCs to skip ahead and the absence of global effects that limit these, there’s a pretty good chance that the PCs will go through the dungeons, not as dictated by their structure, but by how they can wreck them. This makes sense for most of the dungeons herein, but not for the last one, which imho should have had some sort of contingency defensive tricks versus teleportation etc. – particularly since earlier non-dungeon sections did account for such abilities (EDIT for clarity:) with threats of the Atoth.

This is one of the things that plenty of Paizo modules also do, granted, but it is one of the aspects that render running these high-level modules somewhat problematic for many, many groups. Whether you consider this to be an issue or not depends on your playstyle, but for me, Depths of Desperation, with its more pronounced focus on boss encounters, politics and the like worked somewhat better. In short: Technically, regarding challenges posed in combat, I’d consider this to be a success; regarding the surrounding components to set these scenes up, expect to do some work. That being said, regarding flavor, switching of themes and consistency of the sword-and-planet tone, this is a fantastic module, with particularly the juxtaposition of the final two adventure areas driving perfectly home what the genre is all about. Tim Hitchcock delivers in spades here, and gets the epic scales of the module very well.

On the other hand, the whole adventure feels uncharacteristically rushed in the formal criteria, with quite a few guffaws on a formal and rules-level that have to cost this some of its thunder.

In spite of my criticism regarding dungeons and high-level PCs, it is how well this executes its theme which renders it one of my favorite modules in the AP regarding its overall settings and challenges; it really gets the genre. Indeed, had this been polished slightly more, it’d have been Top Ten candidate material. It breathes sword and planet fantasy. And frankly, it’s only due to the strength of the module’s overall themes, of its fearlessness to go all out, that I can justify not punishing this further for its shortcomings. Mind Tyrants of the Merciless Moons is an impressive, well-executed beast, but one that deserved better; I hope it’ll get another pass to clean up its hiccups. As provided, I can’t rate this higher than 3.5 stars. I’ll round up, though, as the module simply does not deserve being relegated to the realms of being considered mid-tier. It is a flawed, rough gem.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The second part of the Dark Obelisk AP clocks in at a MASSIVE 839 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages of colophon, 1 page editorial, 3 pages of ToC/information about the studio,3/4 of a page blank, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 830 and ¼ of a page of content.

No, I am not kidding, that is genuinely the amount of content. This review was moved up in my reviewing queue due to me receiving a physical copy, which is, quite frankly, ridiculous in size. On my homepage, you’ll see a direct comparison of this tome and Occult Adventures. This is a massive doorstopper of a tome.

The basic explanation of the FlexTale system and a brief recap as well as a hook that gets the PCs to the Mondarian Elective, a mining city, is handled pretty quickly. FlexTale deserves special mention: It is essentially a GM-toolkit for quickly determining details on the fly – see my review of the FlexTale 1.0-book for a more detailed breakdown of it; for the purpose of this review, it should be noted that the book assumes you’re using it; while a capable GM does not need it, FlexTale, as a tool, significantly enhances the experience of playing the adventure. It should also be noted that the FlexTale book contains the random encounter tables for this module. The book is provided alongside this adventure in pdf-format, in case you were wondering. The massive Atlas provided for the module also enhances the experience, and I highly recommend that you get it when running this module; the atlas is not included in the regular Dark Obelisk II-module, in case you were wondering.

It should also be noted that this module contains 187 pages of statblocks – NPCs, new monsters, etc. – all come with original artworks, many of which are downright stunning full-color pieces. If you’re familiar with Infinium Game Studios’ modus operandi, you won’t be surprised to hear that these stats are presented in a quadded format, i.e. there are 4 iterations for different power-levels provided. This is in as far relevant, as Dark Obelisk I could go in a variety of ways: It was very much possible to spend months playing it, or to resolve it in one or two sessions. The predecessor spotted a ridiculously detailed settlement, with a huge amount of different side-quests, notes on NPCS, etc., but mostly dealt with a kind of local cataclysm and evacuation scenario when it came down to it, allowing for the like. In short: There was a ton of optional content that you didn’t necessarily had to use, with the core plot being swift and relatively simple. That was, structurally, perhaps the least impressive aspect of the first book.

This tome is different. This is essentially a massive, somewhat investigative mega-dungeon, and it is bereft of filler-quests, fetch-quests or the like. Nobody can complain about missing depth regarding the main meat of the offering here. Why is this relevant? Because, as a result, Dark Obelisk 1 can end with groups with massively diverging levels. While the quadded statblocks are supposed to help there, I don’t think that the higher two iterations of the stats work well for the context of the story told here; that being said, very few groups will enter this module with characters in the upper echelons of mid levels or high levels. Personally, I’d suggest starting this adventure somewhere in the vicinity of level 3 to 5 for the optimal experience in tone, challenges faced, etc..

Okay, that digression out of the way, it becomes relevant to start talking about the NPCs and monsters provided; after all, there are 187 pages of them: As usual for Infinium Game Studios, the statblocks come in quadded version, and each NPC gets a brief write-up that provides a description, an appearance, and combat tactics, though the latter are more akin to general combat guidelines, rather than explicit commentary on how to run the NPCs. The latter would have been more helpful, obvious, but considering that the builds tend to not be as complex, I wager that most GMs won’t be overtaxed by running these fellows. Anyhow, where applicable, the statblocks note faction affiliation as well, and make use of skills like Artistry and Athletics, though these are ignored/modified easily enough, if required. As usual for Infinium Game Studios, the effects of feats, abilities, etc. have been copied in, so you don’t need to flip pages. The stats cover both generic NPCs and named ones, with the latter generally getting the better, or at least more interesting, stats.

This’ll be a good place to note that the pages are coded with bands on the side of the hardcover edition: Said statblock chapter sports a light green band, while the town on the surface gets a blue band; the massive dungeon sections also have their own band, which allows you to quickly open the book at the correct level. It may be a small thing, but it is one that increases the utility of the tome rather significantly. But I digress. So, beyond the NPC-stats, the book also contains a series of monsters that share a certain leitmotif, which I’ll explain in the spoiler-section below. This deserves special mention, since the artworks employed there are extraordinary; while the massive NPC-chapter uses an original artwork for each statblock (a delightfully decadent expense), these tend to be either solid b/w-drawings, or downright gorgeous full-color pieces. I very much loved them, but the monster-artworks? They are outstanding.

On a mechanical level he builds tend to fall somewhat by the wayside in comparison, though: There is e.g. a statblock of a being infected by something. This fellow is undead, has an awesome description…and gets a whopping 1d4+5 damage output and 25 HP at AC 16. That doesn’t sound bad? That’s the CR 6 version for the second power-level bracket of the quadded statblock. The build uses the commoner NPC-class as a baseline (and incorrectly assumes that 1 commoner level equals a PC-class level regarding CR), but does not properly account for its lack of power and versatility in the CR. Granted, it has a couple of proper offensive options like Power Attack and Greater Bull Rush, but compare the fellow to other CR 6 foes, and he’ll look like XP waiting to be picked. Beyond that, know what would have been more helpful that this statblock? Getting a proper template for the affliction. So yeah, there are instances herein wherein the limitations and problems of the quadded statblock approach become very much evident, even in the sections of what I’d consider the “default brackets/tier” of the quadded statblocks for the module, i.e. the first two. An experienced GM is definitely recommended, and I’d furthermore recommend the adventure RAW for groups that are not that into the build-aspect of PFRPG, at least when running this as written. Analogue to previous character/NPC books by Infinium Game Studios, I can’t help but think that the quadded statblock in theory is a good idea; its implementation, however, does not live up to the demands of the system, to PFRPG’s rather complex and nonlinear scaling. If you’re like me and prefer your new monsters to feature an array of new signature abilities to set them apart, you won’t find the like herein, which is rather jarring, as the aforementioned leitmotif as a connection practically demands being employed in a unique, cool template.

The good news, however, is that this is, by far, the weakest aspect of the book. Take the notion of the catalyst tracker, which tracks the behavior of PCs according to law, chaos, balance and love (the latter being about compassion over the ideology of the traditional ones) worked in Dark Obelisk I mainly as a means to have the micro-level interactions with NPCs influence the macro-level of the story; in Dark Obelisk II’s different focus, there are much less catalyst things to take care of, and these aspects pertain to the quests herein in a meta-level and generally feel more like solutions/behavior in line with general party ideology, which makes integration easier for GMs who don’t want to go all in on tracking. This is a plus here, as I feared to see a rehash of the gimmick in DOII.

Now, let us talk about the scope of Dark Obelisk II, for unlike the first book, it is a less compressed experience: This book covers a massive mining town, the eponymous Mondarian Elective, as well as a ginormous 9-level mega-dungeon/mine below, one that even dwarfs the town above. Structurally, the module represents a significant improvement over Dark Obelisk I, courtesy of a lot more unique hazards and terrain features, which render the exploration and combat simply more interesting. City and mine have default random encounter tables, with more specific ones provided where applicable. One of the issues of the mega-dungeon in general sports a rather neat solution: Provided the GM wishes to do so, the minecart system can be used as a sort of fast travel, which may or may not be exempt from random encounters. I very much appreciate having this option represent in a physical manner in the module. The module also includes elevators as further means of progressing between the mega-dungeon’s levels; beyond this, the module also lists the connections of each of the levels to other levels in the beginning of each dungeon-section. Read-aloud texts are provided, with read-aloud texts in italics employed for text that is only read if certain conditions are met, such as the presence of elves or dwarves among the party members. As a nitpick, a few of these pieces of information are gated behind racial prerequisites, aligning them with language. The thing is, PFRPG does allow for very easy access to said languages – you don’t have to be an elf to speak elven, and in the case of obscure and barely legible scrawling, the like is usually handled via Linguistics check, not via racial prerequisites. While this is easily enough remedied, it’s something to be aware of.

Theme-wise, we have a class-struggle with racial tones as a backdrop, as the elves of the Druid Enclave are essentially the overlords of the city, with dwarves and other humanoids as the workers. It should be noted that Dark Obelisk II also “discovers” something I very much enjoyed seeing: Subtlety, and the more silent tones that build atmosphere. Dark Obelisk I was very much an action romp once the escalation trigger was reached; in comparison, Dark Obelisk is a slow burn, and one that manages to evoke a sense of what I’d call a “Silent Apocalypse.” You know, this subdued sense of desolation that Dark Souls so perfectly encapsulated? Picture that sort of theme, taken down a notch. The environments here are not yet as bereft of life and hope as e.g. Lordran, but the general sense evoked, ultimately, is one of a recent cataclysm that went unnoticed, of a place where terrible things happened.

This commitment to the notion of a slow burn is one that really sets this massive module apart, as most adventures simply can’t pull it off due to the limitations imposed by their very scope. As you have by now realized, Dark Obelisk II does indeed have the massive scale required, and it’s one of only two mega-adventures that attempt t evoke this type of atmosphere, the other being Greg Vaughan’s masterpiece “Slumbering Tsar.” In many things, Slumbering Tsar’s setting gets closest to the aesthetics of the Dark Souls games as far as I’m concerned.

Dark Obelisk II has a different focus than aforementioned book; where Slumbering Tsar manages to evoke a nigh-unprecedented vision of a lavishly-detailed region and ruined city and mega-dungeon, with the focus eminently placed on challenging veteran players, Dark Obelisk II has a different focus. Where Slumbering Tsar sports a strong survival theme, Dark Obelisk II instead focuses on exploration, with some minor investigative focus added on top. In short: Dark Obelisk II won’t necessarily be a module that’ll challenge veterans of the game on a mechanical level, also courtesy to aforementioned shortcomings in the statblock department. A similarity, though, would be the emphasis placed on atmosphere, which is arguably the main focus of Dark Obelisk II, to the point where the actual story of the adventure is a less important.

Okay, this is as far as I can go without diving into SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

… .. .

All right, only GMs around? Great! So, the PCs are basically called to investigate the Mondaria City, probably on behalf of the Druid Enclave that controls the massive mining town; communications have stalled, and foul play is suspected. And it is Mondaria City that drives home very well that something bad has happened. Chances are rather high that the PCs won’t meet locals at first– just signs of struggle, fruit spoiling in the market-stands, and upon closer investigation, the PCs will soon find corpses, signs of attacks – and probably encounter some creature sooner or later. This is where I have to recommend two things: While the module does leave it up to the GM to determine when to spring NPCs or monsters on the PCs (you can do so via the module’s system/random encounters), the best thing you can do, is let the PCs breathe in the atmosphere of a place abandoned, a place stripped of (most of its) people. If you let the PCs meet NPCs soon after arriving, I’d strongly suggest not using some of the rumors featured in the global rumor table – there are a few of those that take a bit of the mystery, and one of the best aspects of the module, away.

This atmosphere is driven home by the phenomenal amount of details provided: Let’s take the small marketplace as an example, shall we? We have read-aloud text and material for every stand, every tent. Every house, building? Everything is fully depicted. It is utterly impossible to discern the usual “interaction points”, “relevant buildings” and the like – instead, the book manages to depict EVERYTHING. And unlike Dark Obelisk I, the respective places manage to attain a degree of fidelity that is impressive indeed: You can see each toppled stool, you can count the cutlery on the table; you can see the number of barrels, or crates, you can see blood-spatter on the floors. If anything is indisputable for Dark Obelisk II, then it is that the adventure is a serious achievement regarding cartography. Gone are the inorganic or somewhat blocky structures in the previous module: Mondaria City, and the dungeon itself, are absolutely lavish in their details. This book contains all the GM maps required to run the adventure, with the Atlas supplemental book also sporting the player-maps.

But there is more to this than just maps: Each map has read-aloud text for rooms, regions – and rewards attention to detail, lets the players contemplate the things happened. Which brings me to the second supplemental book I’d strongly recommend for use in conjunction with this, namely the FlexTale 1.0 book included in the purchase of the module. You see, the adventure uses that engine to fill in even more details, if required: Let’s take one random room from the book by flipping it open: I got a table that reads “Crates, Large, 3x”; contents list “Glasses, metals and Woods, Large” – so you roll on the respective table in FlexTale, apply the modification for the amount, and there we go! In short, beyond the already massive attention to detail provided by the maps and sheer amount of area covered with read-aloud texts, the FlexTale system can be used to add even more detail on the micro-level to the setting.

In a way, this represents a means to “zoom in” on a huge amount of objects that’d usually just be generic set dressing. To give you an idea: Mondaria City’s overview map contains 28 keyed locations. Each of these keyed locations correlates to another one-page map, with a rough average of 10 keyed locales per such location; the total number of individual keyed locations for Mondaria City alone exceeds 300. That is before adding details with FlexTale. On the ground-floor only, and many buildings have multiple floors and basements. The ambition, hinted at in Dark Obelisk I, realized here, is quite staggering. Mondaria City is infinitely more compelling, feels much more alive, than Berrincorte ever did, in spite of being a less populated place.

In the face of so much material, it should be noted that small boxes containing the level-map, with the respective sub-area framed, always allow you to retain control over the proceedings; you’ll never be confused where a sub-area is with regards to the global map of the level. Now, I know that I’ve been raving about Mondaria City for a while, but the module manages to retain this depth in the dungeon as well: Different-colored mushrooms, different spider-webs, clearly visible barricades of the minecart tracks. As noted, this module lives a lot through its cartography, which is btw. provided in jpg format as well, though these do tend to be rather massive in size; the sheer amount of detail provided on these maps makes the GM’s job rather easy – just start unveiling the map, and a single glance will show what’s relevant.

Now, I’ve been calling the mines below a dungeon, because that’s functionally how it operates, but this is not 100% correct either; you see, this is a huge mining operation, and as such, there are essentially cafeterias and buildings down there; the mines always retain the sense of being, well, mines, but they similarly have a touch of the subterranean city as well. Sooner or later, the PCs can e.g. happen upon a camp of male and female prostitutes. The result of all of these components coming together is unique: The restraint shown with fixed quest-lines and the relatively low amount of “boss encounters” throughout result in a different kind of narrative experience: The focus lies very much on environmental storytelling and lore – not in the “background story/info-dump”-way, but instead in the way of objects, NPCs, hazards, etc. coming together; the observations of the players will ultimately tell the story more compellingly than a simple expository text could. And there is a reason for that: I can explain the module in one sentence: “The locals were ordered to dig deeper, regardless of consequences, probably in order to mine the exceedingly powerful dark obelisk shards, and happened upon a proper Dark Obelisk.” That’s pretty much all there is to it. The corrupting influence of the obelisk drove people mad; dreadslime was exuded and tainted beings; dreadslime golems and even an infected dragon can be found. It is said dreadslime, by the way, that makes up some of the dark fantasy-components, and that I referred to opaquely before: This should have been a proper template.

Anyways, regardless of my frustration with some mechanical components, I was talking about the indirect storytelling, right? Well, cognizant of the danger, some of the former shard-mining parts are hidden behind secret passages, and the mine does contain false obelisks worshiped by those tainted. The latter are one reason why I recommended caution regarding the rumors: The chance for careless PCs to be faked out by having “solved” the issue is nice – though if they check the magics, the party will notice the ruse. I like this type of thing, and the rumor table can spoil that one. On the positive side of things, the module does seem to be very much conscious of just how strong its scope can render it: Level 8 of the mines, the penultimate one, is essentially just a massive descent, not much beyond that: Endless stair or elevators down, fully describes and mapped. Try it at your table, have the PCs walk down, read it, unveil the map slowly. It WILL make them properly anxious for the things to come.

There is another aspect of the module that I personally liked: As written, the PCs have no proper way to destroy the Dark Obelisk. They’ll arrive here, after much hardship, and probably will have to leave – for the means to destroy the obelisk include the requirement for humanoid sacrifice. This is handled in a more narrative manner, and, somewhat to my chagrin, not by using PFRPG’s perfectly serviceable occult ritual or incantation rules, which, mechanically, deprives this finale of some of the impact it could have had. Then again, having the PCs be forced to retreat is a rather rarely-evoked strategy, so in a way, I do actually appreciate this to a degree. And if the PCs have no compunctions sacrificing dreadlimed miners, well, then the finale can make for a mechanically interesting and rather intriguing finale, though not all parties will consider resorting to the like a viable option.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are better on a formal level than a one-man-project of this staggering size would make you believe. On a rules-language level, we have perhaps the one aspect where Dark Obelisk II does not realize its full potential, but more on that below. Layout adheres to Infinium game Studios’ two-column full-color standard, and, as noted, the artworks provided for the NPCs and monsters are original pieces ranging from solid to amazing. The full-color cartography, in many ways, is the aesthetic star of the massive module, at least as far as I’m concerned: The lavish attention to detail, the focus on making the entire city and dungeon feel organic and plausible is a singular achievement as far as I’m concerned. It is also an intrinsic, vitally important factor of the playing experience, to a greater degree than in other adventures. The hardcover is an enormous tome, with everything noted on the spine; the pdf comes in two versions: The screen-version is fully bookmarked, and the printer-friendly version has a white background, but seeing how the module uses a lot of color-coding, I wouldn’t recommend printing it in b/w.

J. Evans Payne’s Dark Obelisk I was compelling in many ways, in its novelty and ambition, but in comparison to this module, it almost feels like a gimmicky test-run of what the author can achieve and do. That’s obviously a good thing, since the novelty per se can’t carry yet another such book. There are ultimately two conflicting perspectives one can have regarding this tome.

To make that abundantly clear: Mechanically, this is not a particularly impressive book; it does work, but neither NPC/monster builds, nor are the DCs or implementation of skill-use for interaction particularly well-executed. They are functional, but that’s as positive as I can become about them. In many ways, while the formula and aesthetic has evolved regarding the narrative, the storytelling, etc., and shows the restraint in combination with the scope that makes it so special, the quadded statblock formula does not yet work to the same degree that the other components do. This becomes particularly evident when looking at the cool monster artworks, and the comparably lame statblocks – I am not sure at this point, but the problem may be system-immanent, as the scaling employed simply does not correlate with realities at the table. In many ways, I think, that with ONE set of genuinely cool statblocks for monsters and named NPCs, instead of 4 at best mediocre ones, this’d be significantly improved. This scaling issue also shows up, as noted, in the FlexTale book that you’ll consult a lot for lock DCs, etc. On the other hand, FlexTale does allow for a ridiculous amount of depth on a micro-level regarding the mundane treasure found. If you take a look at this solely within the context of the mechanics of being a PFRPG adventure, it will not fare too well. My recommendation for the mechanical aspects of this, particularly regarding NPCs and monsters, is that you take a look at your collection of monsters and populate the adventure with those builds for the combat-relevant NPCs instead, and use the stats herein for the nameless individuals.

However, it is my firm conviction that doing so, that only considering the mechanics, would be a disservice to this tome.

Yeah, I never figured I’d write those words either. You see, Dark Obelisk II is firmly, staunchly, made to be PLAYED. It plays much better than it looks, or that the rather basic set-up would lead you to believe – and that’s due to something that I genuinely have never seen before.

Where other books of this size, with precious few exceptions (like legendary Slumbering Tsar) tend to try their hands at regular dungeon design on a grander scale, and as a result feel cluttered, Dark Obelisk II exerts a surprising amount of RESTRAINT. It lets its vast scope BREATHE, develop. There is a ton to do, don’t get me wrong – but the use of the cartography and daring to not jam in an encounter or quest every 2 rooms lets the players take in the vastness of this environment, lets them actually take the time to speculate about the environments, about what might have happened here.

The result is an adventure that plays unlike anything I have ever laid my hands on; much like a good horror/mystery game, it lets you take in the environment; it feels decelerated in an almost daring way. To me, this is very much the antithesis of the action-blockbuster railroad, a lore-centric sandbox devoted to indirect storytelling, and one that very much knows how to capitalize on its strengths.

This adventure will not be for everyone; it is much more daring than Berrincorte ever was, stepping away from traditional formal structures in a kind of narrative experiment that I personally consider to be a grand success. At least when you run it as intended, with the Atlas and FlexTale properly in use. While the latter has some issues, I penalized that book in my review of it, and doing so again here would be redundant. Still, without these two books, Dark Obelisk II loses some of its appeal; not getting the atlas means that you won’t have those handy player-maps (see my review of that book), and without using FlexTale, you’ll lose the depth on a micro-level regarding the mundane treasures throughout. Without these, I’d suggest subtracting at least 1.5 stars from the final verdict.

How to rate this, then? Well, here things become tough. I’d usually penalize this for outsourcing its player-friendly maps, but considering their sheer amount (see review of the Atlas), and their level of detail, I get it. As noted before, the biggest weakness of the module would be its functional, but comparable weak stance in mechanics, situating it, at best, in the 3-stars vicinity; on the other hand, managing to genuinely evoke a jamais-vu experience anno 2019/20? That’s some seriously impressive achievement, and considering the huge amount of roleplaying supplements out there, can be seen as the well-deserved vindication of the concept underlying Infinium game Studios’ approach to world-design. For this component, I admit to being sorely tempted to consider this to be in the 4 – 5 star vicinity, and one could argue that it deserves the seal of approval for doing something novel that well.

And I don’t mean “novel” as in “novelty”; where Berrincorte’s selling proposition of scope, depth and vision was novel, Dark Obelisk II does not have that luxury anymore, and still manages to blow its predecessor right out of the water with a singularly interesting vision that fully utilizes the strengths of this adventure. It’s that much better than the first module, and it caters to a taste that is usually not serviced by roleplaying game supplements. I hope that may review helps you determine whether this is for you, or not, because I can see this being very polarizing – you’ll hate it or love it; just give it a shot in actual play before you judge it from the reading experience alone.

As far as verdicts are concerned, I can’t rate this as high as I would want to due to its mechanical shortcomings; however, I do love what this tome does, how its uses its format. My final verdict will thus be 4.5 stars, rounded down – and this gets my seal of approval for its uncommon approach to storytelling.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The massive Atlas-supplement for Dark Obelisk II: The Mondarian Elective, clocks in at 479 pages, already minus editorial, front/back cover, etc. I STRONGLY suggest getting this book if you’re planning on playing Dark Obelisk II – it is almost required.

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

So, as usual for the hardcovers produced by Infinium Game Studios, this is a HUGE tome, with proper notes on the spine and color-coded bands on the side that allow you to immediately jump to the proper maps for a given level/environment, making navigation of this huge tome of maps quick and simple in the physical version as well. In the pdf, you can use multi-letter search-codes to immediately find the proper map.

The first half of the book provides the GM-maps – with secret doors, numbers, etc. all provided, just like in the regular adventure book; as noted in my review of Dark Obelisk II, the cartography of these maps has VASTLY improved over the ones featured for the first adventure. While it is evident that software as used here, I have never seen one employed so well: Different tables, chairs and objects, different types of spider webs – this is all lavishly-handcrafted, and the constructions do make sense, everything feels organic, lived in, or formerly lived-in. The cartography is exceedingly impressive.

The main selling point, though? That’s be the player-friendly maps. The second half of the book, with the bands in light blue, provide key-less player-friendly maps. And I mean “player-friendly maps” in the best of ways. For one, transparent outlines of buildings are laid in a subtle manner atop basements. Love that. What I love even more though, would be that they are properly redacted! Where a hidden cavern is plainly visible in the GM-version, there’s just massive rock in the player-friendly iteration. This would be the grand picture, but the book also catches the small aspects.

The Dark Obelisk II-adventure is mainly compelling due to its detail-oriented approach; this is very much underlined by some of its challenges. For example, there is an inconspicuous pile of barrels and crates, with a blank space between their massive piles. That space conceals a trapdoor, which is properly depicted in the GM-map. In the player-friendly version, it’s just a piece of ground! That sort of level of care is frankly amazing to see. I wished every module went to that length.

So, all fantastic? Alas, no. You see, the city and dungeon depicted in Dark Obelisk II have more than one such hidden area that was redacted from the respective overview maps. It’s great that they’re redacted. But what once the PCs have found one such area? Well, unfortunately, these secret areas, out of some unfathomable reason, LACK player-friendly maps! This makes no sense, and remains the one big strike against the atlas, and it is one that seriously hurts it, considering that the convenience of the player-friendly maps is a core selling point of the book.

Conclusion: I already commented on the hardcover version; the pdf-iteration comes in two versions, with one printer-friendly iteration and a regular one; the regular iteration is properly bookmarked. The supplement comes with several archives containing the maps in jpg-versions. The full-color cartography contained in this tome is massive, excessively detailed, makes the environments feel organic and alive, and as a whole can be considered to be a great success for J. Evans Payne. Unfortunately, this triumph is somewhat diminished by the utterly puzzling decision to get leave out player-friendly versions of the secret areas. While certainly not enough to sink this tome, it does represent a serious blemish, which is while my final verdict will clock in at 4 stars.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The Player’s Guide for the humongous second part of the Dark Obelisk saga clocks in at 64 pages of content if you already disregard the editorial, etc., so let’s check this out!

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

All right, so we begin with something pretty nifty, namely the first page after the introduction stating “So, your game begins in 10 minutes” – it’s essentially the cliff notes version of the current situation. A half-elven stranger leads the PCs to the mining city of Mondaria, which, while under the auspices of the Druid Enclave, has ceased communications with them. Unfortunately, we do have a page-reference not filled in here: The book references “p.<>” instead of the Dramatis Personae section. That should be p.51, btw.

After this, the book explains FlexTale, which makes less sense to be here – it’s a GM-facing tool, so what does the explanation do here? I wouldn’t usually mind as much, but it does have a few guffaws here that make me do so: “What is this book” has obviously been cut copy pasted from the first Player’s Guide or Dark Obelisk II, because it references, you guessed it, Dark Obelisk I. It also talks about being “an inspiration to create your own adventures” and similar GM-facing stuff. This is PARTICULARLY egregious, because the player’s guide actually SPOILS one of the more interesting tricks of the module! I kid you not! There is a potential for a false type of victory, and the player’s guide actually tells the players! Worse, it also flatly explains a certain magical effect right afterwards, undermining at least one of the more clever scenes of the adventure. That’s a pretty big no-go.

Worse, this section of the player’s guide also spoils several GM tricks the module uses to make the adventure run; if the players know these, they’re more likely to attempt to metagame them. Not cool.

There is, however, something that is REALLY cool: We get full play-friendly maps of the City of Mondaria, and I mean “player-friendly”; the book goes the extra mile here: Not only are numbers etc. redacted, secret areas are not shown on the overview map, nor are secret area entrances in any way obvious. This is great. Slightly less great: Arriving in Mondaria, as you can read in my review of that book, is a pretty unique experience, and e.g. the residential zone maps sport a couple of details that shouldn’t be on maps that the PCs got from NPCs – the people who hired them can’t know where bodies are lying, so that limits the immediate usability of a few of these maps. Personally, I’d recommend getting the Atlas instead – it also has player-friendly maps for all of the module.

This does conflate with another aspect of the book you should be aware of in the dramatis personae chapter. The chapter not only provides information on evident characters, but also those that the PCs not necessarily know about from the get-go, once more providing a kind of SPOILER. The NPCs are depicted with absolutely gorgeous full-color artworks, including a couple of b/w-pieces. The descriptions, as a whole, tend to be good – though there are a few that also contain SPOILERS – like notes on how an individual is secretly racist and full of hate, or about hidden weapons. USUALLY, the NPCs differentiate between appearances and descriptions, with the latter being great. Oddly, not all of the NPCs come with this distinction, and particularly the ones that lack the “appearance” section are prone to having information noted that has no place in a player’s guide. And yes, the first player’s guide for Dark Obelisk had similar decisions, but unlike this one, the player characters were supposed to be somewhat familiar with Berrincorte – the same can’t be claimed for Mondaria. They can’t know about racist tendencies, deeply-ingrained hate and the like. How could they? They just got here!

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are okay for a one-man outfit, but certainly not impressive – names are e.g. inconsistent “Gordstrull” vs. “Gordsturll” and the like. Layout adheres to Infinium Game Studios’ two-column full-color standard, with nice, original full-color portraits and cartography – though both of these can be found in the main books as well. The print version is a perfect-bound softcover that properly notes its name on the spine.

I’m sorry to say this, but I consider J. Evans Payne’s player’s guide for Dark Obelisk II to be a disappointing failure. The NPC characteristics and secrets spoiled is not ideal; add to that that the incomplete redaction process for the maps can be considered to be a minor spoiler for one of the best scenes of the start of the adventure, and we have a more significant issue. The third, and most egregious one, though, is that the PG spoils some meta-mechanics and even one of the most effective tricks of the module. One that the actual adventure encourages you to pull off. Well, not if the players have read this.

It genuinely pains me to say this, but I genuinely believe you’ll have LESS fun with Dark Obelisk II if you’ve read this guide, making it pretty much the antithesis of a successful player’s guide. This is PARTICULARLY jarring, because Dark Obelisk II’s unique structure would have warranted some pieces of advice that it should be tackled in different ways, encourage players to play it differently than most modules. You know, encourage attention to detail and yet caution moderation, when moving on is prudent, etc. Advice sans spoilers that makes the experience of the module more fun. Some basic investigation suggestions? Perhaps an extended briefing? What to look out for?

The fundamentals are here, but the execution of this guide was obviously rushed, to the crippling detriment of this book. As the baseball metaphor goes – 3 strikes, and you’re out – my final verdict can’t exceed 1.5 stars, rounded down.

Endzeitgeist out.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

The FlexTale Encounter Generator 1.0 clocks in at 92 pages, 1 page front cover, 2 pages colophon (including backer thanks), 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page information about the studio, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 85 pages of content- 5 of these pages include some explanations of concepts Infinium Game Studios books use, including explanations of boxed text colors, etc. – which are, for this book, less relevant, and probably here for the sake of the book template, and to establish the notion of 4 different general power-levels, as indicated by differently-colored icons. An icon with a red box with white swords indicates the highest level version, while a white one with black swords indicates the lowest level one; this is effective, and lets you quickly discern the proper content.

This leaves us with 80 pages of FlexTale-relevant material, so let’s take a look!

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 the first thing you need to know about FlexTale is, that it is a TOOL for the GM; this is not a book you’ll read from cover to cover, but it is one you’ll actively use at the table. While penned for PFRPG’s 1st edition, the book is functionally almost system neutral and retains most of its functionality regardless of system used. If you want to see what this book can do in action, Dark Obelisk II: The Mondarian Elective makes ample use of it. While the book is billed for 5e as well as Pathfinder’s 1st edition, it should be noted that, for the purpose of the weapon/armor-sections, the book does not provide a scarcity level like uncommon, rare, etc. – if you are using this with 5e, you might be better off considering it as system agnostic, as the book was clearly designed based on PFRPG.

But what is the idea here? Well, know how randomized treasure tables in RPGs tend to be singular experiences? Well, the system proposes so-called “contexts” for everything, from NPC interaction to research, to loot. FlexTale generally presents 4 such contexts to roll on, with a module or GM determining the appropriate context: The sample example takes a wizard’s chest, and establishes contexts based on the attitude of the wizard to the PCs: A hostile or indifferent wizard’s chest may well hold a cursed reward, while a helpful wizard’s wouldn’t.

This might seem odd at first from the GM’s side, but it makes a surprising amount of sense and actually puts MORE mechanical agenda in the PC’s hands; an example not taken from this book might illustrate this better, and that is gathering information: Just randomly looking for clues yields context A, pointed and more specialized inquiries yield another context. You still roll as a GM on the context column of the respective table, so there is still the factor of chance, though it is a more finely curated and relevant one.

In order to properly explain what this book does, let you consider an average dungeon room. In function, it behaves very much like something from a point and click adventure game: There are fixed dimensions and interaction points, areas that trigger certain responses. Much like in an adventure game, the very medium in which it is presented, is subject to limitations. Due to constraints on both wordcount and time of the author, it is not feasible to e.g. describe the contents of all 8 barrels inside, right? This is where the potential problem comes in. If the contents of such a barrel are irrelevant, the module will not differentiate between the barrels, and state that they hold the same content, perhaps brush it off with a general notion. “The crates contain moldy sheets.” “The barrels contain spices worth 50 gp each.” That’s functional and efficient, right? Okay, so what if the module’s plot hinges to a degree on e.g. one of the barrels containing an exotic spice, perhaps being laced with poison? Suddenly, there will be more information given by the adventure, and more information relayed by the GM. In the context of a point and click adventure, we would probably get a zoomed-in screen of the barrel in question, but probably not of the others – the constraints of the medium, whether wordcount or time of the designer, limit this aspect. If it’s not relevant what herb there is inside, it’ll just be “medicinal herbs”, right? On the other side, if there’s a werewolf stalking the region, a shipment of belladonna would spark interest and be called out.

This issue in the “zoom-factor” of interaction points may not be something that most players consciously think about, but it’s one of the things that happen regardless. An experienced player will perk their ears when a GM starts describing the contents of a container, the herbs strung up in a witch’s cottage, in detail, as opposed to the use of the general term. In a way, there is a basic kind of spoiler by experience, a kind of unconscious metagaming going on. After all, even the best of GMs and adventure-writer will not spend their time and wordcount describing in detail every little thing, right? That’s neither helpful, nor compelling, and thus, we have found a limitation of the medium of table-top roleplaying games that has been accepted as system-immanent. To be precise: I am NOT talking about the macro-level: Raging Swan Press’ superb dressing books allow for the creation of compelling landscapes and dungeon dressing that help make these areas feel alive.

No, I am talking about the fine details that may or may not spoil an investigation. When it comes to the small tidbits, to the treasure found, to the goods? More often than not, it is a GM’s responsibility to generate details for these aspects on the fly, and that is a task few would relish in. Heck, I am as OCD as they get regarding the plausibility of a world and environment, and yet, I have never felt the urge to rectify this “zoom-in problem.” And, at least according to my experiences as a reviewer, I haven’t seen any other book trying to do that either. Everyone just accepts this as one of the concessions that must be made for the medium.

Well, turns out that not “everyone” accepted this seemingly intrinsic limitation – J. Evans Payne, with his extremely detail-oriented vision wasn’t happy with it, not content to just make the GM take care of that. Enter FlexTale.

We get tables. Tables upon tables, and all with 4 contexts. For the purpose of this book, the default context is A; if the players had a negligible challenge to get to it, it’s context B; if the party had to face a great challenge, it’s context C, and if the party seems disinterested, it’s context D. Sizes of a haul, where relevant, are swift and easy to determine: Small makes you roll once, and use the result; medium makes you roll 1d4 times, doubling the given value; Large makes you roll 2d6 times, quadrupling the numerical value.

The book then proceeds to provide 28 such tables. To illustrate how this works in practice, let’s say the PCs open a container containing simple foodstuff/spices. You roll a d%, and get a 77. If you use context A (default), the PCs will find rosemary (1d6 lbs., 1 gp each). If you use context B (negligible challenge), they’ll instead find saffron (1d6-2 lbs, 15 gp each, good chance of finding nothing). If the PCs had to face a greater challenge, and you’re using context C, they’ll find lots of potatoes (4d20, priced at 2 cp each); in the “not interested” context D, the PCs will find turnips (5d12 lbs., 2 cp per lb.). This illustrates the utility of the system, but also a minor issue in it: From a pure design-perspective, context C should have yielded better results than B, but didn’t. That being said, the table as a whole makes sense: The context C has greater chances of providing more valuable yield than the one provided for context B.

Let’s take a gander at another example, the writing supplies table. We rolled a 36 on the d%. For the default context, we get an inkpen, including value noted. For context B we also get an inkpen – in this table, that’s the entry for 27-50; same for context D (33-57 here). For Context C, however, we get invisible ink of superior quality – an entry that can only be found in context A and C; contexts B and D don’t ever yield this result. Value is provided for these entries, in case you were wondering. This system has a surprising depth, and sizes are noted individually for the respective tables. It also allows you to zoom in farther than usual. Regarding glass, metal and ore, we have a proper write-up of obelisk-tainted ore and its taint as a general property.

It should be noted that the book’s tables also sometimes differentiate between the 4 different power-levels of the PCs – for coin treasure, the higher entries on the table differentiate between suitable treasure for the 4 general level-categories; on a 100 on a d% using context A, a 2nd level party would e.g. find 3d20 gp, 1d12 x 10 sp, 1d20 x 100 cp.; the same group, at the highest levels, would instead find 1d20 x 100 pp and 5d20 x 500 gp. It should be noted that this also holds true for all 4 gem tables. Yep. 4 gem tables. Somewhat to my chagrin, there is one pretty bad glitch here: The very second table, the one for rations and prepared food, is actually missing: A gaping hole of half-blank page is all that is here. This sort of stuff REALLY should have been caught. Thankfully, it’s the only table missing, but one missing table is bad enough.

It should be noted that there is a general supplies table as well, and that it points towards some more specific tables in some entries. If anything, I LOVE this engine. I mean it. It is deeply satisfying for my more compulsive behavior patterns to be able to reference this amount of detail at the throw of a die, and the potential for expansion, not only of the individual tables, but of the master-system as a whole, is VAST. The engine could carry a whole lot more than what has been provided in this 1.0-version.

Of course, the book also provides tables for more traditional “adventurer-relevant” treasure like weapons and armor. The global table denotes whether you roll on light, simple, ranged, martial one-handed or two-handed, or on the exotic weapon table.

And this is where my previous warning announcement regarding 5e becomes relevant: If you object to Pathfinder’s weapon categories being used in 5e, then this might be problematic for you. Same goes for weapon types. The 2-handed martial weapon table can, for example, yield a bec de corbin, or a horsechopper, and it differentiates between a glaive and a glaive-guisarme, which 5e per default does not do. (And there obviously are no exotic weapons in 5e, which would necessitate that items in that table be categorized as simple or martial in 5e. In short: For 5e, immediate functionality is somewhat diminished. This also extends to the prices of the regular items in some instances. Take the bullseye lantern –per the 5e PHB, it’s 10 gp; per this book, it’s 12 gp. Hooded lantern? 5gp per PHB, 7 gp per this book. In case you were wondering: The prices in this book are the ones for the PFRPG-items. Most groups won’t mind this, but it certainly is something to bear in mind when using this with 5e. This also holds true for enhancement bonuses: While PFRPG’s magic item creation engine provides a direct correlation between item enhancement and abilities, 5e has decoupled these to a degree; as such, the tables providing enhancement bonuses for weaponry, armor, etc. have a more limited utility for 5e games.

This becomes more obvious still when taking a look at the lock-tables, which note not only their hardness and hp, but also 4 Break and Disable Device DCs, with each sporting a randomization element: Let’s say, we rolled 82 on Context B of the table, and the PCs are of 8th level: We take the second of the 4 values, which lists the Break DC as 12 +1d8, the Disable Device DC as 14 +1d8. Of course, this is not at all how 5e handles locks and breaking them – no damage threshold is provided. On the other side, the DCs to open the locks remain very much feasible in 5e, while the DCs quickly become automatic successes in PFRPG. Which high level (16+) PFRPG-rogue would even have to roll to beat a DC of 18 +1d6, for example? The highest Disable Device DC can be found on stronghold doors, and clocks in at DC 29 +1d8, which is something well-built rogues can routinely beat at the mid levels. And that’s the extreme end, mind you.

So yeah, as far as the quadding concept is concerned, this book has not managed to win me over; my observation that the automatic progression breaks apart at the 3rd statblock, at the very latest, still holds true here. This also holds true regarding the traps (which drop any pretense of working with 5e in mind); while these generally work and e.g. list their damage types MOST of the time, two, the acid needle and arsenic needle, are WEIRD. They e.g. list: “Atk 10 +1d8 melee and melee touch (2d6 plus arsenic).” The ardent reader will have noticed the absence of a damage type noted here (which previous traps did have); furthermore, and attack can’t be “melee and melee touch” – it’s either or, and this verbiage implies two attacks! To further underline my point regarding the quadding-scaling for these not working properly in PFRPG: The Perception DC to notice such a trap is 10+1d6 for the lowest levels, DC 16 +1d8 for the highest levels. As noted: the first two power tiers kinda work, the higher two…don’t.

In summary for this section of the book: The 5e-implementation is problematic, and the quadded concept tends to hamstring the combat-relevant aspects in the higher tiers for PFRPG; this is a significant issue – but it does not invalidate the enormous utility the system provides regarding its ability to simulate the micro-level; the issues are in the mechanical details and the assertion of trying to cater to two systems that diverge greatly in assumed player character power-curve, which would be impossible in a regular file, the problems exacerbated by the quadded challenges and high-level scaling not working properly for PFRPG.

The second part of the book deals with random encounters: It provides a global table to determine the direction from which the encounter comes, and whether or not they have surprise or are surprised, and one more table to determine the source of the creatures. The book presents a total of 10 such extensive tables, once more with quadded challenges. This section does refer to creatures such as dracolisks and dullahans once in a while, so while the majority should yield no problem in either gaming system, PFRPG groups will have 0 work here, while 5e-groups might need to find or make some builds for a few of the more obscure creatures. Still, as a whole, this works pretty well. As a downside, these tables are not necessarily global – they are tables for Dark Obelisk II, and limited to thematically-adjacent environments.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting is, as a whole, better than you’d expect from a one-man-operation – much better. That being said, a whole table missing is a glitch that should have most definitely been caught. Layout adheres to the 2-column/1-column two-column standard in full-color, with artworks being suitable public-domain photographs; there are a few pages wherr there is more blank real-estate than I enjoy seeing. The book comes in two pdf-versions: The regular one comes fully bookmarked; the printer-friendly one has a white background, but no bookmarks. As the books make use of color to indicate contexts, tables, etc., I do not recommend printing it in b/w. My hardcover is a solid little book, with name and icon properly noted on the spine – you can easily pull it out of your GM-shelf at one glance.

FlexTale’s 1.0 Version has me more torn than pretty much any book I’ve read in a long, long while. In an ironic twist, the book has different issues for both PFRPG and 5e. For 5e, the issues lie in rules mechanics simply not being catered to – it can be used for 5e, but so can OSR or 13th Age books. This is a PFRPG supplement in many ways, in the items referenced, in the name of potions found, etc. In PFRPG, the issue is an old one: The quadded approach for challenge-related content (traps, items, armor, etc.) simply does scale appropriately for PFRPG –you can essentially ignore the entries for the higher two iterations, because they are ridiculously low for PFRPG. Heck, high-level DCs can end up in a range that I’ve seen in modules for low levels adventures. Ironically, the bounded accuracy paradigm of 5e means that it works better than PFRPG with the DCs of the challenges provided, at least unless you are playing a particularly permissive and min-maxy group.

These are serious issues, and depending on your priorities, this might suffice to disqualify the book for you.

HOWEVER, this does not invalidate the crucial and genuinely amazing thing that the engine per se accomplishes, the fact that it increases the depths of the details of a gaming world to the point where the “interaction point” and “zooming-in” issues become impossible to discern for the players. That is a HUGE boon for GMs like me, for groups that want this level of detail. This book does something that no other book I’ve encountered does, and it does so well.

It is somewhat ironic for an Infinium Game Studios-book, for a book of a company devoted to making ginormous tomes with sheer obsessive amounts of details, that the main issue of FlexTale 1.0 lies in its scope and its allocation of content. This 1.0-book was obviously made with Dark Obelisk II in mind, and not necessarily as a global toolkit; this is reflected by the tables included, obviously.

In many ways, I wished that the book just focused on the FlexTables, provided more of them, and put the random encounter tables in Dark Obelisk II. Focusing on the detail-oriented tables would have been wise, as the rules-relevant issues outlined above make the challenge-relevant part, like interaction with magic item systems, DCs, etc., problematic. The detail-oriented tables don’t have this issue and work just as intended, to a degree that is amazing, that warmed my cold GM-heart. Instead of those problematic parts, know what’d have been useful? Weight values. Okay, so you find 1d4 nets. How much does one weigh? The tables list weight for items like spices, ore etc., as you roll the amount of pounds you get, but from lanterns to ermine pelts, the individual items don’t list eight values, which, if you’re peculiar about the like, will require page-flipping. And let’s be frank, if you’re using this book, you will be one of the people who track carrying capacity!

How to rate this, then? I’ve thought for a long time about this. There are, as noted, issues in details for both systems this was crafted for. The random encounter engine works as intended, and if you’re playing Dark Obelisk II, certainly adds to the experience, but it’s not something special; I’ve seen plenty of those before.

The main draw of this book, at least for me, lies in the sheer power to generate mundane “treasure” and components lying around, something that seriously adds a whole dimension of plausibility to Dark Obelisk II particular, and other games in a more limited scope. It is here that the engine does something truly novel, efficient and thoroughly rewarding. I wished that it further developed this aspect, and since this book is explicitly denoted as “1.0”, I am hopeful that we’ll get a bigger FlexTale book at one point. In such a book, a focus on making the details stand out, from plants to herbs to tools, might be prudent way to go.

How do you rate this? Ultimately, it makes most sense to rate this as a companion tome for Dark Obelisk II, as it does not have the scale for long-term, global application – yet. In that task, the book at once triumphs and stumbles, as outlined above. I can easily see this being a 2-star book for some groups, but similarly, I can see veteran GMs realizing what this system does, what I is capable of, and consider this to be a solution for a subtle, yet persistent problem of the medium itself.

As you have probably determined by now, I am in the latter camp: I am rather obsessive regarding details, and an engine like this is right up my alley. In fact, for the very first time, I am not simply curious regarding the future direction of Infinium Game Studios – I seriously want more! I really, really want this system to be expanded. Without the persistent quadded scaling issues and proper commitment to a single system, including implementation, and with a scope of 200+ pages, this system has all the makings of having the potential to be deemed an EZG Essential.

As provided, this is a mighty engine for Dark Obelisk II, but one that does have pronounced issues; its genius aspect notwithstanding, this must be considered to be a flawed book. Provided you want to use it for the lower two level-categories in PFRPG, and for Dark Obelisk II, this does get a wholehearted recommendation from me. If not, then I hope that my ruminations above have helped you deduce whether or not this is for you.

I have to rate this, though. And I thought long and hard; I genuinely should not rate this higher than 3.5 stars, and I can’t justify rounding up for the book as a stand-alone offering: Missing table and issues in both systems make that impossible. And yet, there is a genuinely inspired and amazing core here, one that made me want to slap my seal of approval on this, in spite of its flaws. I thought long and hard, and as a reviewer, I can’t do that, as my excitement for the engine’s potential and for what it does is not necessarily supported by broad application in context thematically divorced/ far beyond Dark Obelisk II. As a person, I love this. I want more. I want the formula to be refined. If you’re as OCD as I am, this might well hold true for you as well, though I can’t assume that. This is, ultimately, a deeply flawed book that contains a genuine diamond in the rough of an engine, one that demands to be polished to the proper shine.

Provided you use this in conjunction with Dark Obelisk II, this’ll enrich the experience significantly, as the random encounter tables are made with that book in mind. In such a case you should round up, which, after much deliberation, my official final verdict will do as well, solely on the basis of rating this as a supplemental book for Dark Obelisk II. As a stand-alone book, you should consider this to be a book in the 3-star vicinity. Please do note that, if the core engine here, the addressing of the detail-issue, is not worth as much to you as it is to me, that you should instead consider this to be a 2.5-star book at best.

Either way, I sincerely hope that this is not the last I’ve seen of FlexTale.

Endzeitgeist out.