I support Rich Howard's Patreon and that is why I originally received a copy of this supplement. Rich is amazingly creative and that is why I follow him. Even so, when I originally received the notification for this supplement, my thoughts were dismissive: "Alchemists? How do you make alchemists a playable class? That wouldn't be fun." You might be thinking similar thoughts. Let me tell you how I was wrong, so very wrong. Alchemist for Fifth Edition created by Rich Howard and published by Tribality Publishing has made me a true believer in the power of alchemy.

First, the layout of the supplement is straight forward and the design is clean. Numerous artistic photos throughout the supplement add to the alchemist theme. No part of the design detracts from the information provided; page two is the table of contents and page three goes straight to the "meat".

Second, the content is simply amazing. Rich not only makes alchemists both a playable class and a whole lot of fun, but also provides 7 different traditions for the alchemist class. These traditions encompass different ways of using "the science of magic" and I found every one of them interesting. Because my main love is the sea and nautical adventures with a hard leaning towards pirates, I found the irezumi tradition the most interesting, but your mileage may vary. ;) As a DM, I am blown away by the potential for both friendly NPC's and future enemies of my Party. (Everybody loves to hate the sycophantic poisoner, right?) In my humble opinion, the "meat" in this book is delicious.

Third, I just can't believe the price vs. value comparision on this supplement. This is a 20 page supplement with 18 (assuming you don't count the clean table-of-contents page as "wasted space") pages of solid information that you will return to again and again with 7 highly different traditions to work with. Whether you are a player looking for a new type of character to play or a DM who wants to expand your inventory of magical NPC's, this is the supplement for you. Just buy it already; you won't be disappointed.

5e Options: Rogue Archetypes - Shadow Warrior presents a fascinating new character option. The Shadow Warrior is a rogue with dark spell-casting abilities, exotic weapons proficiencies, and an affinity for the darkness. If you like dark and gritty rogues with tremendous power and a potential to screw over the party, then this is definitely the class for you. I personally believe this would make an excellent villain, but you may want to play a Shadow Warrior in your party. Either way, this product is well worth the purchase.

This product contains 11 pages of interesting and well-balanced ocean-based monsters for D&D 5e. The monsters range from CR1 to CR14 and all have excellent background information so that you can easily work them into your game. The layout and art in this book are also both excellent. Reading through the pages made ideas for how to use these monsters just leap into my head. 5e Menagerie: Oceans of Blood is a great product at a great price and if you do an ocean-based campaign, it's a must have. Add it to your cart, you won't be sorry.

Urban Dressing: Port Town is the latest release from Raging Swan Press. This 12 page booklet is chock full of the sights and sounds, people, and places of a small port. The book contains four sets of tables detailing different aspects of a port -- Sights and Sounds, Businesses, Folk of Interest, and Hooks, Complications, and Opportunites. None of the tables disappoint; each provides solid info that a GM could use either on-the-fly or as part of his or her game prep. If you want a solid GM resource for helping with nautical adventures for a price even a stingy Dutchman would pay, then look no further. Even if you hate it, the money-back guarantee makes purchasing this a no-brainer. Get Urban Dressing: Port Town today; you'll be glad you did.

2:37 that I will never get back.

Floyd the Mailman is a slightly humorous story about a man who is bitten by a zombie, but continues his life as a mailman w/o anyone really noticing because,

1) Mailmen are boring (apparently) and 2) Floyd doesn't seem to need or want to attack people to eat them.

For me, this story did not really follow the zombie meme, as it broke some of the cardinal rules about how zombies behave. You might like it, but I didn't.

Outbreak: Undead is one of the best RPG experiences that I have EVER had. I review zombie games on www.BoardGameGeek.com and this game has been dominating my play list pretty much since I got it. When I review games on BGG, I look at their originality, rules, components/quality/layout, theme, coolness. This game almost scores full marks.

What I Like: The game is an original take on the zombie RPG, because it is really not just an RPG, but closer to a zombocalypse simulator.

The rules are hard-core, no excuses, this-is-how-post - apocalypse-life-is-so-deal-with-it feeling. This is not a game for wimps, especially if you use the online character generator to create yourself as a character. Your character will probably die.

The free online content available for this game is INCREDIBLE. Get the game, join the forums and look for the Free Content Friday stuff. You will have to join and participate in the forums to get it, but WOW!

I love the character generation system. I will admit that there is a learning curve to the process, but remember all things of true value require work on your part.

The different Outbreak levels and the way that they change the encounters and the scenario/campaign as you move from one to the next really add a level of realism.

The rules for equipment (and its degeneration), the rules for formations and the rules for panic are all excellent.

ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING about the zombies, the different types, the ways they can pass infection, everything is very well presented such that you could customize the game to nearly anything. This is proven by the April 1st 2011 Free Content available here on RPGNow.

The chapter on combat, including open wounds, wound types, grappling with the undead, etc. is all very clear and realistic.

Again, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in the game masters section is really cool: Encounters, stronghold rules, missions, viral tables, everything.

What I DON'T Like:

Some of the character generation rules are arbitrary and don't make much sense -- for example: according to the rules characters over 200 lbs can't have the skill Agility. My stepson is 6' 5" tall. He practices parkour in real life. He is unhealthy and anorexic-looking at 200 lbs. His normal athletic weight is 220 lbs. Believe me when I say He DEFINES Agile. Additionally, by these rules, 2x Super Bowl champion Tight End Todd Christensen is also not agile in his prime at 6'3" and 230 lbs., he is just one among others that I could name.

Between 10 years of past autocross and car tuning experience and my wife working for an engineering firm that reports on auto accidents, I know a LOT about vehicles. The chapter on vehicles is NOT realistic, but in fairness, reality and vehicles would make for a truly complex set of rules that would NOT lend themselves to being 1 chapter in an RPG where functioning vehicles are scarce anyway.

TABLES - TABLES - TABLES Where are they? This is a system nearly as complicated as 1st Edition AD&D and there are only a handful of tables in the book. Wow, could it really use some more!

The layout of the book is something some people will like and others will not. I like the idea of it being like a survivor's notebook. That part is cool. What I do NOT like is the small print in the "handwriting" font -- I get it thematically, but I could sacrifice that realism to be able to more easily read the text. I'm glad I don't need glasses, 'cause this book must be HELL for people who do.

Overall this game rates 4 stars out of 5. What it really comes down to is this:

Is it PERFECT? NO. Nothing is.

Is it better than anything else I have seen for this genre? YES.

That comes from someone who has played and reviewed almost 100 different zombie games and has over 25 years of RPG experience. It is a deal at 2X the price. Buy it now.

This item is what convinced me that Outbreak: Undead was absolutely THE zombie RPG for me. When you download and read through this, you can't help but be impressed by the detail and realism levels that game designers considered when they wrote the rules.

If you demand realism in your RPG's, then from the basics of how the system works to time keeping to the phases of combat to special attacks, this small taste of Outbreak: Undead will leave you craving more. . .

Do you like RPG's? Do you like zombies? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then stop reading and get this FREE set of adventures right now! I'm serious. Why are you still reading this?

Oh. You must have already downloaded it. So you already know that if you have Outbreak Undead and you don't have this that it is like having a HUMVEE, but no keys or gas. If you don't have Outbreak Undead, then DON'T get this. . .

UNLESS, you want to have one of the best zombie AND role playing experiences that you may ever have. I run a group with 5 players with OVER 80 years combined experience with various RPGs. We don't play it, if the game isn't GOLD. So I warn you. . .

If you get this FREE supplement and you DO NOT have Outbreak Undead, you will want it more and more until you get it.

When the Navy Walked is a great game. The name is odd. It seems wrong, yet I could not come up with a better name for a game set in an alternate reality where you dream of steam. I wanted to find a cool way to tell you what this game was about, but it is about too many things for my words to be adequate. This is from the text of game :

These rules will take you from the British Colonial Victorian Science Fiction era, where the Martians and British colonists fight to control sections of Mars, to the Boer steam spiders fighting over the Transvaal region of Africa against the German Seebattalion and British Land Dreadnaughts. The rules will also move forward in time to Edwardian Science Fiction, to the mud-filled trenches in France, at the very line of death where walkers take the battle to the steambots of the enemy in hopes of a brutal victory. Victorian Science Fiction can be about whatever you want it to be about, as long as you remember to dream of steam.

If you are thinking, "Hmmm, I might be interested in that." You are. Believe me.

The amount and quality of the material in this text is outstanding. The miniature rules themselves are very tight, yet allow for command errors and sabotage. Thus they provide TONS of room to put an RPG around these miniatures rules for large or small scale land battles. Just the background material alone (some of which you can get a free look at in the preview) is almost enough to be its own stand alone product. If this were printed up in a hard cover book like the D&D Dungeon Master's Guide, it would be an eye-catcher selling for $50. My advice it to get it now.

If you need more convincing, look at the free preview and read the table of contents. Now read some of the background information. Yes. It's all that good. Buy it.

This product is really impressive. The plans for the inn are absolutely complete with a basement, 1st floor, 2nd Floor, and roof. The art work is so nice that you could hang it on your walls. For the price, this set of inn floor plans is a very good bargain. If you run a miniatures based fantasy game, that uses a tavern or needs a tavern for a location, then look no further than this.

When I downloaded this file, all I received was one page detailing one of the craters and part of the street. The artwork is OK, but leaving the buildings blank and grey detracts from the "gritty realism' otherwise depicted in the advertised product. This may be perfect for 3D model buildings, but I'm not into that.

When the Navy Walked - Quick Play is a very surprising product. It is surprising to me because I have looked at a number of these "quick-play" rule sets and I have NEVER seen one that was complete. When the Navy Walked - Quick Play is a COMPLETE Rule set. It really IS everything you need to play the game.

Not only did the rules actually being complete surprise me, but the quality of the PDF and the rules also surprised me. Quick-Play rules are usually "down and dirty". By that I mean, I don't expect to see a lot of fancy graphics or art. I surely don't expect to see one of a kind COLOR photos of Steam Punk miniatures battles in progress. Yet, this Quick-Play has all of that. At 46 pages, it comes in at a little more than half the size of the main rule book, though.

That might make you wonder what you are missing by getting the Quick-Play rules instead of the Full rule-set. Well, you will just have to keep wondering -or- you could read my review of the core rules. Without going into details, you miss out on TONS of theme and alternate history; lots more battle pictures with some absolutely incredible miniatures; and the precise numbering system that ALL war game rule books should have. (i.e. 1.1, 1.1.1, 1.1.2 etc.)

This last item, is to me, the reason that I give this product 4 stars out of 5. You have all the rules, beautiful pictures, a taste of the theme, BUT you do NOT have the war game rules reference numbers that ARE in the Core Rules.

This system is really cool! If you like the Steam Punk genre and you like (or maybe could like) miniatures games, then I really think that either this or the core rules is a must have product. Check it out!

When I saw this cabin in the snowy woods, available for free I decided to download it just to check it out. Once I saw the detail on the pages, I had to print it out. I believe that I am going to use it to make an expansion board for Zombie Plague. I have a scenario in mind already. Anyway, after I had printed it out, trimmed it up and put it together, some friends came by and saw it. All of them thought it was really nice. Further comments:

"What is that long building?" "Shed? Chicken Coop?" "A Drying Barn" "Meth Lab. Hidden away in the woods" "I was thinking a vivasectionist's abbatoir"

It was at that point that I realized this cabin could be used in any setting. I don't know what The Ravenlands are. I don't play fantasy RPG's any more, but I recognize something cool when I see it. Did I mention that it was FREE? What are you waiting for? Download it now and check it out!

I believe this collection of rafts, small boats and sloops to be a phenomenal value. I mean, HELLO, this product is FREE. In this case, FREE does not mean that the product is damaged or in some way bad. The art is beautiful. FREE is GOOD all by itself. But when you add the value of something FREE to the value of something both nice looking and completely functional, then FREE is MOST EXCELLENT! That is what Small Ships 1: Launches and Rafts is. MOST EXCELLENT!

I found these boats when I was looking for something to pimp out the game Dead Man's Island and I really can't over that they are free. Download them and check them out now, why not?