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Savage Worlds All for One: Regime Diabolique 2nd Edition
Publisher: Triple Ace Games
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/08/2021 20:11:10

Wonderful information marred by incredibly messy and inconsistant presentation.

First things first, if you want an excellent musketeer era sourcebook this needs to be on your short list. Anything to do with the the first half of the 1600s and vaguely relating to France can be found here, between historical facts and the changes for the sake of drama you have a wonderful setting at your fingertips. From money to culture to law Regime Diabolique gives you an excellent sandbox to play around in and, much like the first edition, I have no qualms about giving it a hearty recommendation in that respect.

However... jeez, where to start? Okay, actually trying to effectively use what the book is trying to put across feels like an exercise in frustration. This is really three sourcebooks clumsily stitched together into one. I have no problem with the basic idea of that, I'd argue you are still getting excellent bang for your buck in what you get. However this is a clumsy job with some major problems. I love the wonderfully evocative art of the France part, I think the horrifiying reproductions of the traditional woodcuttings in the 'Satan's Playground' part is a very evocative and effective way to present the terrible things going on in the Germanies. I think people are going to be put off by going from the high quality pulp and high adventure pictures of one part to the depictions of impaled babies in the other.

Similarly there are rules either missing, that don't make sense, or that are later simply contradicted by the three sourcebooks together format. For example, you are supposed to be restricted to being a musketeer for the first 150 or so pages. Why? Even in setting this is ludicrous, you are presented with a dozen or so viable secret societies and factions which would provide a ton of plot hooks. You could start out as members of the cardinal's guard only to later find out horrifying truths, black blades serving the king in a quieter capacity, or simply young bravos still looking to earn their way into the musketeers (oh, hey there D'artagnan)! If there was a plot point campaign or something similar then this would make some sense but there's nothing of the sort. The second rulebook gives you the two sentences necessary to change that and the third throws it out altogether! Or what are the spells restricted to each school? Because you tell us that's the case but never provide any listings or rules about that, only the single spell every school must have and the trappings.

I've got a half dozen similar minor complaints like that, from a few spelling errors (they happen in something this long, even I suggest people accept it) to other clumsy changes between sections to a depressing lack of Barbary maps. There are some major flaws in presentation and consistancy here, especially for something that's supposed to be a second edition! When this product first came out there were some embarassingly obvious spelling and editing errors on the presentation page that didn't get fixed for over a year and I'm afraid that sort of attitude seems to have been prevalent in the product as well. But I want to emphasize there's a reason I'm giving this 4 stars, there's also a lot of good here. Heed my words and be aware you're going to have to do a lot of digging in places and put your own bodges in other sections to make up for the product's flaws... but if you're running a musketeers campaign this book could still be well worth it.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Savage Worlds All for One: Regime Diabolique 2nd Edition
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Scion Second Edition Book One: Origin
Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/04/2019 19:17:04

This is a weird one, the complaints about this book are legitimate but...

The best way to think about Scion is that both books (Origin and Hero) create an excellent setting and what you need to begin. When I think back upon the pair of them as a whole I really can't think of what I would cut outside of a little duplication. It's not all perfect, there's definately some questionable choices on organization, confusing concepts, and a few things that are either poorly explained or contradictory. But overal everything fits together into what looks like a very smart AND clever setting, both in world and system. Having said that... book one REALLY comes off as the worse of the two. It's a bit like seperating the classic D&D players manual and GM's guide... and then printing off three quarters of the GM's guide first. It's all still there and really works but as an individual book... yeah, three stars at best



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Scion Second Edition Book One: Origin
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Against the Dead
Publisher: Vorpal Press
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/09/2017 16:37:59

I was tempted to rate this one three stars since it's current overal rating seems a little too high... then I realized I was being petty over some personal gripes and taste issues.

This is an interesting little book. It's a great**** resource if you haven't done much in the way of RPGing and want to set up a schlocky B-movie zombie scenario. For anything else though it's a bit more middle of the road.

First, be aware this contains a slightly paired down and modified d20 modern system with all the rules you'd need to play. It's got some interesting ideas and is pretty thematic for the zombie B-move side of things but be aware this is still a pretty fair proportion of the page count. I still think this is a fairly priced book, there's enough here besides the reprinted side of the rules to be worthwhile but don't just look at page count vs. price and think 'whoa, that's a good deal'.

Then we get to everything else which causes my love/hate feelings about the book. See, if you're doing a B-movie scenario here this book is great, it's thematic, apropriate, pretty consistant in it's way. If you're not going the B-movie route, you want a more 'serious' zombie apocalypse, a more balanced game, or zombies as part of something else in your game and this book will make you want to bang your head against a wall. Classes tend to be over the top, unbalanced, and (IMO) adverse to multi classing for the most part. Now if you want your guys to be over the top powerhouses this is great, it could be really interesting! There's no way in hell I'd allow these classes anywhere near most d20 modern games. Feats for the most part (excepting the standard ones) follow the same pattern. (Unless you want your players to have total magic immunity in two feats, yeah, that's what I thought). The artwork is... let's call it appropriate for evoking B-movie shlock and exploitation and leave it at that, it could be a plus for you, it could be a minus.

On the other hand, toward the end there's a nice vareity of zombies to throw at your players and some good advice about GMing for the zombie scenarios that I'll give a good thumbs up for. And the zombie feats and infection mechanics are more good ideas and mechanics that can easily be adapted to other settings of which I heartily approve.

All in all: 3 stars if you're looking for a general horror or zombie related sourcebook, 5 stars if you're looking for a b-movie schock zombie campaign book.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Against the Dead
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Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook)
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/03/2017 20:05:32

Interesting! Not the best shadowrun product ever but it certainly has it's charms. Updates and adds a number of new magic rules and variants, such as sub groups and sub paths, details on various traditions of magic with bonuses and penalties. Newly discovered paths of magic are interesting and the addition of a dark grey but not inherently evil set of blood magic rules feels appropriate for shadowrunners.

There are a few typos here and there, nothing major, and also a couple of rule changes or additions that definitely should be up to the GM if they include them in the game or not (and one which I wondered if it was also a typo. Since when can Mystic Adepts not craft? I agree they're a little overpowered as is but I tend to default to the old fourth edition method of mana OR chi rather then allowing them to buy both for each point of magic). Overall I think it's a worthwhile product... though I hesitate to recommend it to everyone at the current price point. It's not too high but I think it's a little too high for an automatic buy.

One reason I might be going a little easy on this (and I want prospective buyers to be aware of that) is I'm a sucker for the metaplot. Minor Spoiler Alert ,

without giving anything away this book has some interesting metaplot moments, including one which necessitates the involvement of Laughing Man, Wordsmyth, AND Orange Queen.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook)
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Elder Evils (3.5)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/22/2017 19:03:00

Some elder evils, some merely middle aged.

Honestly several parts of this book should merit a four, unfortunately they're dragged down by other chapters and given how poor some of those feel for a title called Elder Evils while even the good chapter aren't too long and I really can't justify giving this title over a three.

Each chapter of this book (post the intro of course) presents a different potentially apocalyptic scenario and some suggestions on how to integrate it into your campaign along with a climatic encounter complete with maps and full info. They also include info on adapting the evils for the Faerun and Eberron settings. The trouble with this approach is that several of these chapters feel disjointed, illogical (and not in a good way) or incomplete. Not to mention that for a title called elder evils some of the presented evils feel pretty lackluster. Some do not, several of the chapters present some pretty good options with a lot of potential that, if they were the quality of every chapter in the book, would have me debating giving this a five star rating. It doesn't help that the first two/three suggested elder evils all felt like a swing and a miss to me. Why does an undead moon suddenly give up and leave the atmosphere if the party defeats it's surprisingly weak (so to speak, still CR18 with some nasty enviromental advatages) avatar? How the hell is a rising mythos monster making each day have two hours less daylight worldwide a subtle sign that only the most dedicated paranoid conspiracy nuts catch? And so on.

Every chapter is a seed, and some of these are really good seeds that gave me what I was looking for. I think for what Elder Evils' sets out to do that 3 stars is a fair rating, some of it really doesn't work and you're probably going to have to put a lot of work even into the ones that do to get what the book's promising out of them. But it can be done, and some of these ideas have some really neat high level implications. I'm not sure I recommend the book at it's current price ($15, and definately not for the $30 mark) but if it's on sale and you're looking for some high level plot seeds it might be worth a look.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Elder Evils (3.5)
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Ben Dunn's Ninja High School the Anime and Manga RPG
Publisher: Battlefield Press
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/26/2017 12:42:07

Probably 3.5 stars if I'm honest. It's not bad but... see that blurb above this review? The one about the product? At the time of me writing this review it's about 80% based on the history of Ninja High School and 20% on the Ninja High School RPG, mostly stating that this is an RPG. That's kind of the attitude I think that was brought to making this product.

I don't actually have too many complaints about the RPG. It's a simple, solid adaptation with enough background info to get you into the world and enough rules detail to get someone new to RPG's started. There are some technical errors that caused me to raise my eyebrows but nothing egregious. But at the end of the day you'll look over it and get the feeling this was knocked together as a quick cash in: take Ninja High School, copy and paste together the d6 rules, put up some stats for some of the recognizable characters, throw in a page and a half of plot seeds then sell. Yeah, that's all there pretty much is to this.

Now, don't get me wrong, a competent GM (sorry, Principal) and/or fan of the series should be able to work with this. The basics are all there and they are usable. Hence why this gets the three star rating. But you get the feeling the company didn't actually care about this product and that in turn discourages you from playing it unless you bring in some real enthusiasm before you crack it open. Just know that you're dealing with a product that forgot to do things like check where Professor Steamhead's Intellect was before printing his stats.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Ben Dunn's Ninja High School the Anime and Manga RPG
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Starjammer: Core Rules
Publisher: d20pfsrd Publishing
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/04/2017 00:09:50

Maybe 4.5 rather then 5 but, eh, close enough and calling it 4 would be petty. My main complaint, a little light on some setting suggestions and examples and a little light on possible mix and comparison with high tech versus magic even after they mention it. However, like I said those are petty complaints and they do an excellent job of giving you an up to date set of tools and examples on how to bring space back to pathfinder based systems. Honestly I'd probably not even harp on those little niggles so much if things weren't so slender on this subject matter right now, this feels a lot like complaining someone isn't including the whole Monster manual in the GM guide book. In any case this is definetly worth buying if your interested in doing space or galactic empires in your pathfinder based game and aren't just going to handwave it as 'a space wizard sends you between planets.'



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Starjammer: Core Rules
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Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (2e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/15/2016 02:14:15

Unless you're a big fan of D&D 2nd edition as a rulebook this leaves a lot to be desired. Given a few mistakes in the actual book (what's a ships spelljammer rating again (SR) because you give two different examples which disagree entierly on rounding up or rounding down) and the actual clunky rules involved it probably only gets 2 stars as a rulebook.

However there's a reason that D&D is on an entire third revision since then and that's probably not why you're interested in this. And as a source of ideas and materials this book can really shine. Frankly most fantasy settings ignore space to a ridiculous degree given how powerful and prideful the wizards are usually getting. Seriously, in many fantasy settings it should be a surprise that some wizard hasn't taken getting to the moon as a challenge... and then succeeded. Spelljammer gives you tools and ideas on how to handle this, especially if your cosmology isn't especially scientific.

It's hard to say how much of the book could be useful to the average DM. Some stuff, like ideas about the Giff, Neogi, and Illithids can be pretty useful to just about anyone. Other stuff, like the phlogiston, isn't going to work for too many people. Basically you should treat this as a mix and match grab bag of ideas that you're still going to have to kludge a little to make work for more modern rulesets. On the flipside there's a lot of stuff here that can be easily converted in different ways. Want some basics for a fantasy extraterrestial invasion of your campaign world? The info on the Neogi and Illithids, especially their ships, is excellent. Want to run a campaign about a mad wizard striving to get to space? This is THE book you need for the climax to that. Want to try adding some sort of intergalactic travel to your setting? The book provides several different drives, some possibly useful rules and considerations about travel time and even if you don't like the phlogiston you could do a quick bodge and just call it hyperspace.

All in all it's not a brilliant product but it is potentially a very useful one.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Spelljammer: Adventures in Space (2e)
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Razor Coast (PF)
Publisher: Frog God Games
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/18/2015 14:01:47

An excellent undeniably five star product... with a large BUT! attached.

First off the good. I doubt I have to go into much detail, previous reviewers have beat me to it and doing another itemized list of all the good stuff in this 500+ page product seems a bit pointless and just serves to tire out anyone actually reading over these reviews. But to sum up... a well written product with an incredible amount of detail that still lets you be as free form as you want to be while undertaking an incredible adventure path. Evil characters are evil without being pure bwa-hah-hah, they're evil is understandable and a GM can adapt their motivations and plots on the fly. Good characters are not just shining paladins out to smite evil because it is there but also have their quirks and reasonable personalities... for the most part (see below). The area is well fleshed out with lots of options but still a couple of less developed spaces on the map a GM can use something of his own in. It is expensive, but given the amount of stuff you get in it I'd say it's well worth the price. Seriously. Less then 10 cents a page here, compare that to some of the $1 odd deals you see around this place with six or seven pages including the cover and think about that.

BUT!

There's the odd formatting and spelling error, nothing major and more then forgivable on a project this size but I remember them being occasionally jarring. The native population comes off as a bunch one note noble savage types, getting into Mary Sue territory. It's not too bad but after the excellent characterization of everyone else it can be a bit grating. But the biggest 'flaw' of this book is how basic it is. I want to emphasize this, it's not a bad thing that the Razor Coast doesn't require you to have a dozen different pathfinder books to run it. And that's not taking into account the mind boggling effort it would have taken the writers to keep looking over everything and updating thie FIVE HUNDRED PLUS page book while they were busy converting it as each new supplement came out. However, the book as a whole simply cries out for some of the advanced stuff. Ironically perhaps the additional book you'd want most is the Advanced Class Guide, the Razor Coast is simply screaming for the Swashbuckler and Brawler classes. You can see the writers trying to put the archetypes in with just the basic classes but it doesn't work as well (IMO). Similarly Bloodragers and Skalds could make interesting additions to the natives and there's another half a dozen classes between the Advanced Class Guide and the Advanced Players Guide which would be useful, thematic, and/or interesting. I'm especially torn on the Shaman class, on one hand it might make the natives a little too powerful. On the other hand, certain local patrons for some sort of Hex using class could really help or thematically explain certain native abilities while remaining perfectly within the rules. To a lesser degree the campaign might lend itself well to some Mythic additions. I can't see it working as an out and out mythic campaign but the addition of a few mythic levels to certain 'appropriate' bad guys (I'm trying not to spoil here) would be thematic, differentiate them from the more convention bad guys in town, and help explain a couple of things that had gone on before the players came. Similarly, certain recommended points in the outline, not to mention the mysteries of the local area, lend themselves to giving the PC's a mythic level or two before the end of the campaign. I mean that literally though, I wouldn't do more then tier 3 on anything here (except MAYBE the biggest bad of the bunch) and even then I'm worried about how much mythic stuff could unbalance an excellent setting if you're not careful.

All in all it's still a five star product but keep this stuff in mind when buying.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Razor Coast (PF)
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Monster of the Week
Publisher: Evil Hat Productions, LLC
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/18/2015 17:52:09

This is an excellent product... for the right group. If you or most of your group or RPGing for the first time and are interested in the genre I'd go all the way to saying this is a full on five star product must have. The problem for groups that aren't so inexperienced is this is a little too full of 'your first RPG' type information or leading you by the hand for everything.

If you're familiar with Evil Hat's other work the basic system will be pretty familiar. For better or for worse I'd say this one's even more slimmed down and on rails mechanically. Again, for a group that's all rookies or has mostly rookies in it this isn't a bad thing. For the right crowd or if you know what you're getting into this could be excellent. My personal opinion is that it's too fast and too on rails, you'll get one of the designated level ups whenever you reach five experience points. Certain abilities can literally give you experience points, not to mention you get one whenever you roll a 6 or less on two six sided dice for one of your actions.

Now for the genre, what they're trying to do, and certain groups this isn't a bad thing. Heck, it's pretty thematic. Monster of the week is designed to episodic, and if each character gains a little bit each episode that's quicker then usual on the shows but far from out of character. This same sort of 'problem' applies to most of the rest of the game. It's designed to go too quickly. Well, how many of these types of shows hurry past because they don't know they'll get a second season? It's designed and encouraged to be a bit too formulaic. Hello! It's called 'Monster of the Week"? And so on and so forth.

Like I said at the beginning if this sort of thing sounds alright to you or you're new to rpgs this is excellent. Evil Hat provides a lot of support and what's done here is done right. It's just a little bit too much in the computer game RPG vein at times, you can only do certain things in certain ways and your freedom is more limited then it would be in more advanced games. I doubt this will hit my group's table. But I respect what it's trying to do, and if I had a kid or younger cousin that said they wanted to try and put together a group and do some rpging and they had no experience THIS would be the book I'd recommend for them.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Monster of the Week
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Sparks of Light
Publisher: Twisted Die Productions
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/22/2015 16:33:21

Let's get this out of the way, I think 3 is a little on the low side and no one should be rating this product lower then this. If there was a three and a half button I could probably be convinced to give the product that.

Basically Sparks is closer to an extended essay on the Magic Girl and POSSIBLE ways for a GM to do such a campaign then a true rule book or campaign in itself. The system, such as it is, is extremely rules light and there's very few actual tools given for someone to work with. There's a little good artwork but that's few and far between, most of what's there is either poor or formulaic. And that's not counting the format. DO NOT take that page count seriously, the book likes to make chapter breaks every few pages and leave most of a whole page blank. I mean that literally in places, no art, no nothing, all too often three sentences being the only thing on the page. I find it a little telling how often this happens more to the back then the preview pages that would come up here.

Now, having gotten that all out of the way that's not to say this product couldn't be useful for you. I called this an extended essay for a reason, it's a nice one stop location for the basic things a GM should think about before doing a magical girls campaign. It might not be the ultimate resource for a GM but it makes an excellent checklist for the GM to go down and maybe get some insperation for filling in the blanks. If you like a rules light campaign this system might not be bad, it feels a little too light for me but it has some merits and the idea of a relationship web might honestly be useful in other genres as well. And one of the reasons I feel guilty for going so low on this product is, well, is a Magical Girl game really needing an ultra heavy and detailed rules system? Let's be honest here, the whole genre usually runs on a fair amount of flexibility and more players would probably appreciate that in a game rather then 'what's the difficulty rating for not being spotted by sempai, roll stealth' type approach.

All in all the books a bit too empty and fluffy, but it's not BAD. It's potentially quite useful if you're about to run your own game even if you're not going to use the Sparks system. And for it's price (I got it for $5) let's be honest, you shouldn't exactly be expecting a Pathfinder or D&D core rule book either. I have complaints and I wouldn't exactly recommend it to most people, but I wouldn't recommend they stay away from it either and there's the odd time I'd put it on someone's list.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Sparks of Light
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Obsidian Apocalypse (PFRPG)
Publisher: LPJ Design
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 10/15/2014 02:13:23

I'm torn on this one, basically four out of five is a compromised review no matter how you look at it.

Okay, let me explain. I have some signifigant gripes about this book BUT a lot of that feels more like a matter of taste and nitpicking. Even taking them as seriously as possible I'd still say the book earns a three out of five. On the other hand there are some things this book does really well and I'm feeling a bit guilty for not giving them more weight and giving it the five.

The current other review does a really good job on the details so I'll not go into the full breakdown here. I think the problem is the book claims it's a setting and tries to pass itself off as one (even saying so on the cover) but I just can't feel it. It's basically a toolbox and rules expansion with a few seeds you could use for a setting. A REALLY excellent toolbox, don't get me wrong, but just a toolbox. I guess that's the real problem for me, there's the potential for four or five really excellent settings here but I feel the book does a half hearted job in portraying them and their presence drags the other stuff down. Especially when the book isn't always clear about what they'd intend to be in what setting and what isn't.

I think the purest example of this is the 'map' included in the book. It's really a combined map that includes locations from different settings, what's really important in one setting doesn't even exist in another which might be something unimportant in a third. There's no indication of scale or distance on the map, what the terrain is supposed to indicate, or whether this is supposed to be a continent or the whole planet. This is sort of indicative of the whole problems the 'settings' had for me.

Be careful this warning doesn't sour you on the book though. Yes, the settings seem a little half hearted. As a toolbox this is an excellent book and without overdone details there's a lot of adaptability in the settings they have provided, probably even more important in a post apocalyptic setting then usual! There's some very interesting seeds here and some rule mechanics to back them up (I especially like the sanity rules here, a nice CoC DnD mix). I'm a little skeptical about the spells and how they're balanced but I think I can give them the benefit of the doubt for some of the post apocalyptic settings they're supposed to be used in.

I guess the best way to put it is that as a setting book this one's three stars. Not actually bad but I'd have trouble calling it good. As a toolbox it's got a lot of good ideas and some new rules and monsters (and races) to work with and should probably get the five. If you know what you're getting into it's a worthwhile buy, for all my hemming and hawing I'm strongly considering using this combined with a homebrew take on the Dragonstar setting.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Obsidian Apocalypse (PFRPG)
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Corporia - Core Rulebook
Publisher: Brabblemark Press
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/29/2014 00:04:39

A nice little cyberpunk-ish game with a couple of disadvantages. I think this one's less a matter of good or bad and more a matter of taste so I'll quickly toss in a few comments on things you should probably be aware of, other reviews already have more detail in a much better format.

Most of the rules and mechanics here are a little on the light side, not in a bad way and not without some crunch to them but keep that in mid when deciding if this game is for you or not. It might be a little heavy for a first RPG but it could still work if the group is particularly interested in the subject matter.

The setting is nicely handled, it's not ultra specific but it gives you a good bare bones which you can build on quite well. The same could be said for the campaign framework they include. I can't say there's much to them but what there is is good and can be modified to suit your own group easily.

The book's style is... debatable. It's based pretty much entirely around photo's with some minimalistic props and manipulation. On one hand this didn't appeal to me too much, on the other it fits in well with the theme of the game and could very much add to player immersion in some places.

The book does have a few flaws, it gets a little too minimalistic at times (for my taste), some of the pictures really don't work, sometimes they seem to forget if they're narrating 'in character' or not, and they forget to even do a rough guideline on character advancement. The most I found was in the character creation section, noting the a double cost after character creation. They forget to give even suggestions on things like training time or experience point rates. I think that sums up the attitude of the book right there, if you have any experience with RPGs before this you shouldn't have too much trouble coming up with something based on what they've already given you (and adapting it easily to what YOU intend) but they probably should have included something more.

Still, it gives good references and links to what it has and it has some nice stuff in here. Especially for a $10 price point. I don't think it's a must have but I'm still ready to give it an above average mark and if you like the premise I'd say it's well worth checking out.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Corporia - Core Rulebook
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Savage Worlds All for One: Regime Diabolique
Publisher: Triple Ace Games
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/13/2012 22:01:01

First, let me say the rating of three is probably a little unfair. I'm giving that to the book based upon it strictly as a standalone product with the buyer only having the Savage World Core rules to go with it. By that guideline it has both pros and cons and should be considered adequate. Taken in a different light as part of a the greater Savage Worlds setting it has potential but more on that later.

Based on the three rating here's how I view it.

The Good: An underused period with plenty of potential the book does a pretty decent job of providing a GM or player with everything they need to go on a three musketeers style adventure. The setting is very fleshed out and the book provides options for varying it between more historical to an even higher degree of magic. The magic system is interesting and (I'd argue) appropriate and the different styles of sword fighting are a very appropriate addition, perhaps even the best implementation I've seen for a swashbuckling type setting. Artwork in the book is both of good quality and could be useful in game. The map of Paris and the provinces of France in the back is a very nice addition which I'd argue is generally useful for anyone running a musketeer or pre-modern setting French game.

The bad: Unfortunaty I can't say it really comes together well enough. The book does an EXCELLENT job of giving you potential plot seeds and has one very nice central twist (which I'm not going to spoil) but it doesn't even have a bare framework of starting a campaign despite saying all your characters must be musketeers. I'm not going to disparage their excellent work by saying that this needed a start to finish plot point campaign but at least something to get the players started and give the GM something to build on would be nice, especially if you're going to railroad them somewhat on the character building front. This goes hand in hand with all the world building and details, both historical and semi historical. I like having them and I know there are GM's out there that would prefer this method to taking up space with official adventures but I would have suggested cutting down on some of the details and providing at least one or two adventures just to show how it could be done and provide more of an example of how to do certain types of musketeer adventures. The book could have used some more proof reading, none of the mistakes were 'what the #$%!' level but there were a couple of confusing ones and at least one that qualified as pretty bad, replacing the whole opening paragraph describing the Rosicrucians with something else entierly.

Conclusion: All in all none of this were deal breakers but I feel I have to put the book at a 3/5 because of them rather then something higher.

Now, having said all that, taken as something larger this book has a LOT more potential and could really shine for some GM's and groups. The dark Savage Worlds outlook has always promoted interconnectivity and using this book in something like that is really promonent. I can't remember who (Mark Vassal?) suggested that an interconnected campaign against the forces of evil over time through various Savage World settings is a very real and cool possibility and this setting would fit in well. More then that, looking at some of the characters and groups you could well use the things from this book to determine heroes and villians of the whole overarcing story.

Even if that isn't your cup of tea both the magic system and the fencing schools could be adapted and included into other settings. Maybe it's just me but I think Iron Dynasties is screaming for a GM to lift the fencing schools and their included rules out of this book and put them into that world, you could almost do it with just a change of names. I'm not entierly sold on some of the rules and the complexity they can add to combat BUT that's just me and I can still see plenty of potential there. The magic sytem isn't quite so great but it provides an interesting alternate option for magic settings the power point rules don't always work in. If your players want a higher powered Solomon Kane magic system of perhaps something different for the Weird Wars setting, I could see this working with a few tweaks. A word of warning to GM's though, a stricter penalty of some sort for failure might be in order, I kept having visions of my players trying to cast spells of escape time after time even though they were bound and gagged.

So to sum up: an adequate product by itself, some good ideas marred by some glaring gaps and failures in editing. Taken together with other Savage World books it might be something more and maybe even qualify as a must have for certain GM's and play styles.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Savage Worlds All for One: Regime Diabolique
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