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PC Pearls $6.99
Publisher: Goodman Games
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by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 09/30/2008 20:21:43

I’ve always felt somewhat leery of products that were entirely fluff-based. When I bought an RPG book, I wanted it to do the heavy-lifting for me in terms of game mechanics; to calculate numbers and invent new crunch for me to tinker with. Fluff, I felt, was something I could do on my own. Why pay for a book filled with things that I could just as easily invent on an imaginative whim? With PC Pearls, however, Goodman Games comes back with some answers – namely that it’s fun, it’s convenient, and sometimes there’ll be things that I honestly wouldn’t have thought of.

PC Pearls is aptly named, in that the book covers the broad ranges of an RPG player-character (from creation to retirement) and drops little pearls of information regarding each stage. Often told by the Lord Bedlam Havok, many of these parables are humorous, often poking fun at the conventions that RPG players have adopted for years (for example, don’t ever tell the GM that your PC is eating a meal; that’s presenting an opportunity for the GM to screw with you). Others are surprisingly useful tips and additions that are great advice for when in-game…my next character, for example, will absolutely be taking advantage of the professional services of the Grennar family.

Of course, there are also some articles that I found less than eminently useful. In many cases, these turned out to be the humor articles, where use had been traded for laughs, something I don’t particularly care for – after all, something useful now tends to be useful again later, but few jokes are as funny the Nth time around. Similarly, the book has several lists that are meant to be used when fleshing out a character (e.g. backgrounds). I’ve honestly never liked those very much; I’ve yet to meet a player who was so bereft of narrative drama that he couldn’t dream up three sentences about how his character became an adventurer, which is what most of these lists tend to consist of.

That said, it’s a given that not all pearls will be perfectly formed. However, this book definitely has more good pearls than bad. I loved the article on how to set up a successful ambush. The list of yes/no questions to ask the gods when you’re able to speak to them was quite brilliant, and the section on basic items no adventurer should be without made me nostalgic for the days of ye olde-schoole. Ultimately, I found myself grinning as I flipped through the pages of the book, making mental notes for the things my next character could use, and biting back a chuckle or two at the more amusing parts of it. It may require some buffing, but PC Pearls is something you’ll find quite valuable.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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PC Pearls
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