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Elemental Gemstones
by Dale M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/01/2008 17:29:56

Elemental Gemstones details seventy gems and crystals for magic item creation in the Karma Roleplaying System. Each has a bit of fluff attached to help GMs determine the appropriate use. Also listed is the element the gem is aligned to (earth, fire, air, and so on) as well as its availability (common, difficult, and rare). That is the whole of the crunch presented in this product. The introduction of the book gives the reader a sense of basics of the Karma magic system.

With such limited amount of crunch as well as it being presented in general terms, it is easy to port these over to other role playing games. D20 gamers that desire an alternate item creation system that does not involve spending experience can instead seek out rare and precious stones to make their items. This book works perfectly with Exalted as written. Elements Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Wood are all represented. Metal and Lightning are also present if your game involves Autocathon. Modern games that involve magic, such as Mage and Shadowrun, can use these to help draw depth to the game and explain why certain gems are required and not others. Players could the ones to discover why a certain corporation’s secret hording of sapphires has nothing to do with their monetary value. Even in Scifi games Star Wars, these gems have a place. With Old Republic Jedi searching out the gems that best suits their individual personalities, this reference can provide a quick guide as to which gems would be appropriate and how difficult they are to acquire.

Disclaimer: My first writing credit is with Bards and Sages



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[5 of 5 Stars!]
Elemental Gemstones
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Neiyar: The Ruins of Dazu
by Craig S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/08/2008 08:26:25

Though it says it is for levels 8th to 12th, I don't know if I would use this with 8th or 9th level PCs unless those PCs are really twinked out. Most of the encounters are easily scaleable, but the final encounter might be a bit too much for 8th or 9th level PCs. Otherwise, a solid adventure with three different story hooks depending on the party composition.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Neiyar: The Ruins of Dazu
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Neiyar: Land of Heaven and the Abyss
by damon r. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/17/2007 10:36:35

Very interesting flavor to the setting. The format and art are a little bland, but I don't think I really care too much about art in a PDF. Not a politically-correct setting by any means. The races of the setting are very cool and work with the jungle world they live in. Hearth Magic is an idea that seems to me long overdue. Hearth Magic is a skill that lets you "buy" certain hearth rituals with skill points. The rituals are powerful, but its balanced out by the fact that you have to spend skill points to get them and actually find someone willing to train you. The section on flaws has some pretty amusing listings that will make for interesting roleplaying opportunities. And just when you thought there weren't any new original spells: EXPLODING COCONUTS! God, I can't wait to use that!



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Neiyar: Land of Heaven and the Abyss
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Creator Reply:
I'd like to take a moment to address the layout/art issue. Neiyar was first written for 3.0 several years ago, and was our first full-length RPG product. Frankly, I'm not satisfied with the layout either. While we did update the system for 3.5 and tweek some of the issues with the original edition, it still isn't where I want it to be visually. We have sat on doing a complete new revision, however, until we know what is going on with 4th edition. There is little point in making cosmetic changes if we are going to have to completely revisit the product again in 6-8 months. For now, we are focusing on moving forward and developing support materials for the setting. When we do revise Neiyar, you'll be notified that the new download is available through the revision system here at the site.
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The Festival of Blades
by Russell M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/10/2007 10:53:21

This is a module for people who just want to beat crap up. Really. The bulk of the module takes place at a gladitorial-style event called The Festival of Blades. Like some lethal version of Survivor, you'll need teamwork to get through parts of the module, while other parts may pit you against your own party members. And woven throughout is this backstory about a murderer killing off contestants, and you get roped in to investigating it. Some nice twists throughout to keep the more serious roleplayers happy, but plenty of opportunities to just wipe the floor with enemies to make the ROLL players happy. And a few little side quests to boot. The mod would take a lot of work to run as a non-Neiyar game, because much of the backstory is dependent on the interaction between the various races and the politics of the setting. But if you don't want to use the backstory and just want to let the players beat the heck out of each other and NPCs, this would definately do it. And when they find out what the prize, The Blade of Kalla, actually does, they will be happy to beat each other up for it...because there can be only one Champion!



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
The Festival of Blades
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Neiyar: Land of Heaven and the Abyss
by Russell M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/10/2007 10:42:49

I really like this setting. There is plenty of fluff here for those who really want to immerse themselves in the world, while also plenty of new crunchy bits that can be used in other games. If anything the setting has a very "organic" feel. Like if one took a regular jungle island, opened the gates to magic, and just let it develop on its own. The new races have a purpose other than just giving players a laundry list of cool powers (though my favorite, the Krakadons, is very cool). Some of the spells and feats may be a bit overpowered for a typical game, but the setting seems designed for a slightly more powerful type of play. The jungles are lethal, with not only demons, cultists, and mutated monsters running around, but oversized bugs, diseases, quicksand, dangerous plants, and tons of other things ready to kill you. Some of the artwork is just OK, but the meat of the book is solid. There are a few instances where the book appears to reference 3.0 instead of 3.5, but otherwise the rules are solid.

The interesting twist is, like Oathbound or Ravenloft, it's a setting you can throw on your party without telling them. It's a stand-alone world, but it's possible to plant the island in the middle of an ocean on any setting and just have the party stumble on it. One minute your party is setting sail on a mission from the king, the next a insanely powerful sea monster (The Green Death...the divine pet of one of the goddesses) smashes the ship and the party gets stranded on the island. Oh, teleporting off the island doesn't work. But that's not just a contrived bit of trivia, there is a reason for it that makes the setting that much more interesting. Now there are portals that go to different places...but these things aren't really known about, are difficult to get to, and are guarded by nasty demonic guardians.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Neiyar: Land of Heaven and the Abyss
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Koboldnomicon
by Russell M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/08/2007 20:55:51

This is a hefty collection of all sorts of kobold silliness. Equal parts fluff and crunch, this book gives plenty of options for a kobold as a player character. The sub-races have a much better survivability than the base kobold, and the Dragonmarked is just way too cool not to play at least once. The Vermin Kin class will make the squeaming in your group cringe, but it's a great class that plays to the dank, underground world of the kobold. The poetry was funny and the stories were cool, but there were too many of them and maybe they should have been web adds instead of in the book.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Koboldnomicon
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Mythos: The Principled Assassin
by Russell M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/08/2007 20:46:41

This seems to be the only one out of the series that focuses exclusively on one god. This weird god of assassins is also responsible for hospitality, which grants his followers a certain amount of flexibility in a fantasy world. If you have a player that's been wanting to play a true assassin but were worried about how to allow it, this product solves the problem. Mostly a fluff product with not a lot of crunch. But if you need ideas on how to run an assassins' guild in plain sight of the law, this is really the perfect product. Lots of well thought out background information to help you mesh this god into your game.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Mythos: The Principled Assassin
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Mythos: Blessed Ladies of Law
by Russell M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/08/2007 20:42:44

Much like Gods of the Dead, this does a good job of offering some varied new gods with well thought out followings. These three would easily fit into any game setting, and would be really useful for paladin players looking for a little more flexibility in that whole Lawful Good thing. While each goddess is lawful, they all have slightly different ideas of what that should mean. This puts them at odds with each other sometimes, which could make for interesting roleplaying situations.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Mythos: Blessed Ladies of Law
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Mythos: Gods of the Dead
by Russell M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/08/2007 20:38:51

Nice, original take on gods of death. Each god is a unique entity unto himself, and their churches are well thought out and would mesh well in most games. The few new magic items presented make sense and fill in a few blanks. (So how does a vampire travel cross country with his coffin anyway? No worries, when it's a folding coffin!). The Dhampir prestige class may be a bit unbalancing to allow as a player, but makes for a nice NPC option. But if you are running a powerful game, it won't be an issue.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Mythos: Gods of the Dead
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Nemesis II: Serial Killers
by Craig S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/13/2007 22:13:58

Very useful product. NPCs are easily added to a game with little planning. Suggested scripts are original and give a personality to the NPCs. The story seeds are more like mini adventures. Some nice links to crime reference books, plus a link to a lengthy article on real serial killers for anyone who wants to seriously run a major CSI investigation. Any one of these serial killers would be great for a CSI inspired game in fact. Few minor typos. Formated in single column not normal two-column style, but text broken up nicely with text blocks for scripts and the blood-splatter or the edges is cool. Character portraits are sweet. For the price, very good value.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Nemesis II: Serial Killers
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Nemesis I: Vampires
by Nathan C. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 05/09/2007 00:00:00

Nemesis: Vampires presents five NPC write-ups of adversaries you can throw at your party. The 48-page PDF, by Bards and Sages, contains some great writing, but ironically is held back and dominated by its own biggest nemesis, bad layout.

Vampires begins by presenting an introduction containing a small disclaimer and a big ?ole retcon. These vampires are not your traditional D&D Monster Manual 1 Vampires. Many of the balancing weaknesses of the monsters such as opposition to daylight and sleeping in a coffin are taken away. This section needed to be given a bit more thought and provided the reader a template for these special kind of vampires. Instead, it simply says to raise the CR by 1, buy the book does not do so automatically. Without the changes to the class, the book does not fly. The changes to the class are too dramatic to not be properly addressed by the author.

The Layout of the book also leaves a lot to be desired. Two versions of this 48 page, black and white book came in my zip. One was 33 mb large and was not much different in style and layout from the other one. That is pretty big for a single PDF with only a few pictures. The pictures, are not embedded in the text and come off as more of an afterthought than an actual integration. Vampires contains book marking, but it is poorly done and does not take advantage of the tree system booking marking of adobe. Instead every section and sub section reads in one straight line with the first NPC not even getting his own unique bookmark.

These gripes really take away from the excellent writing of the NPCS. Each contains special, unique abilities obviously inspired by the vampires of Cinema. The statblocks are provided in the good old former statblock form (which I love) and each entry contains long meaty hooks and a deep history of the characters. About the only thing that I did not like was the connection of all of the NPCs. I was hoping that with a book like Nemesis: Vampires, we would get five nemesises, not a nemesis and his flock of henchmen. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the connections between the NPCs could make an interesting story as your PCs hunt down the lead vampire, Marcus Hayden.

For the DM

You really need to adjust the CR before any of these NPCs are useable. It would not be fair to a party to throw in such powerful adversaries at the level they suggest. The gnome vampire Nissa is one of the most fun characters in the book and her neutral to evil attitude could really cause some conflictions in a party.

The Iron DM There are a lot of distractions that take away from the enjoyment of Nemesis: Vampire, but the PDF is still enjoyable for its good parts. It provides 5 well documented NPCs that are useable with some tweaking. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: - The writer was really into his words and there was a lot of detail in each npc

  • the old stat block is the best
  • the story hooks are like mini adventures without stats
  • the artwork is great, very colorful, deep and dark<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: - one of the pdfs is too big
  • the bookmarking should have been done a little more detailed
  • the changes in the vampire class should have gotten its own template, not left up to the DM to determine
  • More artwork was needed to breakup the flow of the PDF<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Disappointing<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>


Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Nemesis I: Vampires
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Adventure Havens: Library Lore
by Nathan C. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 02/13/2007 00:00:00

I like an adventure that encompasses more than hearing a rumor at a tavern and going into a dungeon. Adventure Havens: Library Lore, adds another location element to your Dungeons and Dragons games by providing 12 stocked libraries ready for implementation into your games.

Though not the most well designed book, the writeups of the various libraries are distinct and detailed enough to break the rutt of the Tavern to Dungeon highway.

Adventure Havens: Library Lore, a follow up by publisher Bards and Sages to their equally as informational Tavern Tales, is 50 pages of solid writing. Each Library entry begins with basic stats for the library including owner, floors and number of books. From there, they go into the history and regulars in the library. The writers do a nice job of introducing a feint adventure hook into every few paragraphs. Towards the end of the description, each entry contains one or more adventure seeds that can be used to sprout off adventures. Some seeds area bit more detailed than others, whereas the Gadget Hall had an unexciting seed about Halfling rumormongers, the Grom?s Library had the pretty cool trials in Quest for the perfect Thief.

Hampering the reading of Library Lore, the books layout is most unimpressive. Though it appears to be a similar layout to Tavern Tales, it seems that the entries are more bunched together and hard to distinguish from one another. The book is well-bookmarked with the entry and its elements all just a click a way. If not for this, it would be difficult to maneuver around the book.

Also, enlight of the adventure hook elements of the libraries, descriptions and people, there does not appear to be a ton of stuff to aid in the main purpose of the library, finding and retrieving books. It feels like the libraries are there to generate new stories instead of help move old stories. I would have liked to see a listing of more books, perhaps some new methods to aid current adventures.

For the DM The North Legal South Library is a different kind of building for a fantasy genre. It houses legality for several regions and could easily fit into a dozen different campaigns. There are several research methods provided as well. This is one of the most well balanced entries. Those looking for a good adventure hook will also enjoy the Astral Fortress, which contains a series of arcing adventure plots. The descriptions are written as such that you can easily place your own items and flavor inside.

The Iron Word Design snafus aside, Library Lore provides a dozen sound libraries that will bring a unique flavor to a game dulled by the same old thing. Several of the libraries are designed finely enough that they would be worth integrating into a current plot line as well.
<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: - Each library is written and described as so to be unique from the others. YOu get 12 different flavors

  • some of the entries reallys and out, and are worth putting in multiple adventures asdifferent versions
  • I enjoy the direction of the Adventure havens lines, there are some nice seeds in them<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: - the layout was hard to read
  • I wanted more research methods and book information
  • Too much cartoony artwork came off as cheesy. I don't mind the cartoon stuff in moderation, but some different artwork would have brought out the unique flavor of each entry. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>


Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Adventure Havens: Library Lore
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Troubleshooters
by Brian C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/05/2007 00:00:00

If you like vampire stories you will like this one. The vampires in this story are likeable in that charismatic serial killer sort of way. And I really liked the little twist at the end which didn't feel forced. Some writers try to get too cute with their stories and end up screwing them up with those "surprise" endings. But this ending is one of those "I should have seen that coming" but didn't ones, which was fun. The only thing is this is a really short story, and it probably could have been fleshed out some more.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: cool characters and plot<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Could have been longer.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Troubleshooters
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Adventure Havens: Library Lore
by Brian C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/02/2007 00:00:00

Library Lore is worth the price just for the NPCs alone. There are dozens on NPCs in this book, from challenge rating 1 all the way up to 30, and it even includes some dragons as NPCs. Some of the NPCs are generic guards, commoners, and such that are meant as background characters. But most of them come with not only full stats but also detailed histories. There is a nice index that sorts them all by name, race, and level so that if you need an NPC for an X level encounter quickly you can just find it no problem.

But the purpose of this booklet is to make libraries exciting. I think a lot of DMs handwave it when PCs say they are going to gather information or research something, and don?t much think about where they are going to get the information in the first place. This product does a nice job of giving you a reason to actually go to the library and explore it. Some of the libraries, like the Corner Store, are more like a fantasy version of Borders. They serve as an information gathering place for the locals to read books, gossip, drink coffee, or whatever. Gadget Hall is less a library than a gnomish workshop, with not only collections of books but rentable work benches to run experiments and such. Many of the libraries double as something else. Grom?s Library is actually a giant underground proving ground for rogues, as an example. The Halls of Steel are built above a dwarven mine. Which kind of makes sense, since I don?t think a fantasy world would often have a dedicated library system.

Oddly, I guess I was expecting a librarian NPC class or something, but the product doesn?t offer any new classes, and only a handful of new feats. The bulk of the product is to provide locations, NPCs, and ideas. In that, it does a good job. Each library has a listing of seed ideas, and the NPC histories include are sure to inspire ideas of their own. The mini-quests are interesting, though some feel slightly contrived. Many of them are suppose to tie in to a multi-library quest that leads to the discovery of a library on the astral plane. It?s difficult to pick up the clues at first, though thankfully the writer included an appendix that actually spells out where the clues are and how they all connect.

I really liked the art in this. It?s sort of a fantasy cartoonish feel that works with the concept. Layout was nice and easy to read. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Plenty of NPCs and ideas. Very nice artwork.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: multi-library quest a bit hard to follow.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Adventure Havens: Library Lore
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Mythos: Gods of the Dead
by Michael M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/28/2006 00:00:00

Presentation: clear, variable death cults: helpful, already used in current campaign<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



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[4 of 5 Stars!]
Mythos: Gods of the Dead
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