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Tankard Tales: Willowbark's
by Megan R. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 03/14/2009 10:19:18

In fantasy role-playing, to start an adventure in a tavern is a classic... but this tavern is quite special. Not only does it come with detailed inhabitants and even battlemaps, there are two adventure ideas centred around the place, one suitable for Heroic Tier characters and one for Paragon Tier ones. Both adventures can be just one-off events that take place when the characters happen to drop in for a drink or the night, or can be the start of a whole campaign.

The location of Willowbark's is left deliberately vague, somewhere on the edge of civilisation, so that you can put it wherever is convenient within your campaign world. It's known as a good place for adventurers to meet and tell their tall tales. The inn itself is well-described, including the food and drink on offer (useful if you struggle to come up with exotic drinks and their prices off the top of your head). The staff, too, are provided with beautiful word-pictures to help you make them come alive to visitors; and there are a few rumours to be had as well as a dark secret to discover... but no patrons are described, you'll have to come up with the other customers for yourself.

The two adventures are based around the Sons of Soryk, a local adventurers' guild. Your characters may be part of it (especially if you run the Heroic Tier adventure for them), or it may come as quite a surprise to them. An outline of each adventure is given to enable you to decide if you'd like to use them, and then each is presented in sufficient detail for you to run it, complete with all the necessary stat blocks, rules, tactical notes and so on. Maps are supplied, showing where everyone and everything of note is located.

Finally, the battlemaps. These have been presented in such a way that when you print them, overlaps are provided to make alignment simple; and the layer effects are used to allow you to decide just what will appear on the map. A spare sheet of furniture is also provided: if you do not like the layout provided, disable the furniture layer and place these as you choose instead. In appearance, everything is crisp and photo-realistic, very attractive.

While both adventures are short, and basically consist of a combat encounter with a rationale to back each up; the whole thing is very well presented both visually and in terms of the text, and should prove easy to run. A good example of how to provide everything the busy DM might need to get on with the business of actually running the game.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Tankard Tales: Willowbark's
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SORD Plus 1.0
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 01/27/2009 15:06:35

Organization and layout are all too often ignored in RPG books these days. We, as gamers, like to go on and on about how well balanced a system is, or the ratio of crunch vs. fluff in a book, or the quality of the artwork, or any one of a hundred other things. How clearly the information is explained and organized in the book, however, doesn’t usually get discussed. That’s a shame, because products like Myth Merchant Press’s SORD Plus 1.0 showcase just how much difference that can make when playing an RPG.

Made specifically for the Beta Edition of Paizo Publishing’s Pathfinder RPG, SORD Plus 1.0 (or as I like to call it, Sword +1) is a dramatic reorganization of the Pathfinder rules regarding all aspects of combat in the game, the operative word here being “dramatic.” The PDF uses a number of techniques and ideas to make everything INCREDIBLY easy to reference. For instance, each topic is dealt with on a single page. Want to quickly reference the rules for Initiative, including holding and readying actions? Go to page four. Need to double-check exactly how grapple works in Pathfinder? It’s all right there on page nineteen. That alone would be convenient, but it doesn’t stop there. On each page, clever use of colored tables segregating various aspects of the topic into different, easy-to-manage boxes makes it possibly to quickly reference whatever part of whatever it is you’re looking for. Suppose, for example, you’re looking at the aforementioned new grapple rules for what effect they have on spellcasting. Just look at the side of the page for the Conditions sub-header, and glance down the bullet points until you find the one for spellcasting. That’s all there is to it, and it’s like that with everything!

The book doesn’t skimp on the technical aspects either. Beyond the ubiquitous (and necessary) bookmarks, the initial table of contents is also hyperlinked for ease of navigation. Moreover, the PDF is layered, so you can enable or disable the layers as you need to to remove things like page numbers or the front cover. It’s really difficult to find any fault with this product when it goes the extra mile like this.

Just as a reminder, it’s important to remember that SORD Plus 1.0 is specifically for the Pathfinder Beta RPG, unlike its generic 3.5 counterpart. If you’re buying this product, it’s for the Pathfinder Beta rules and no other. Likewise, this book covers the combat aspects of the game. While that does extend to a very broad definition (such as various skill breakdowns, action types, channeling energy, etc.) don’t expect to find things such as class breakdowns or XP tables here – those are beyond the scope of this product.

As the original SORD did for 3.5, SORD Plus 1.0 makes itself essential if you’re running a Pathfinder Beta game. The sheer level of convenience that this book gives to Game Masters cannot be overstated. No more dog-earing your books and flipping through pages to find where various rules are. This book proves that while content may be king, layout is the power behind the throne. Is a lack of rules management causing damage to your game? Well overcome that “manage reduction” with a SORD Plus 1.0!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
SORD Plus 1.0
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Fantasy Fiends: Kobolds!
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 01/05/2009 19:33:24

Sometimes you really can have your cake and eat it too. That’s the best way I can think to sum up Fantasy Fiends: Kobolds. What else do you call a product that utilizes 4E layout and design elements in a 3.5 d20 product?

From the description, this book doesn’t sound like it should be as interesting or as useful as it is. A short book of kobolds? It hardly seems worth the effort. However, those who give this a chance will find a product that’s truly inspirational in not only what’s given here, but how simple and easy it is to use what’s presented.

Opening with a brief introduction on the society, combat tactics, and advantages that kobolds have, the book then gives us several listings for encounter groups in ascending Encounter Levels, each with a brief description of what the band consists of and what their tactics are, along with stat blocks for short traps. It really has to be seen to be believed, but the layout is exactly like what’s in the 4E books, but with the 3.5 stats instead, which is pretty exciting.

Then we move on to the kobolds themselves. A basic stat block is given for a typical kobold, along with separate blocks containing the text of new powers and abilities that other kobolds can have. This is the major draw of this product, and the biggest 4E-ism that it utilizes – various new combat abilities are presented here, and are assigned to various kobolds. It’s not that these are feats, or various alternate class abilities. They’re just new powers, and they’re assigned to kobolds in different roles as needed. Most have group frenzy, others have mob mentality, etc. It’s the best of 4E added to 3.5 enemies. A half-dozen such kobolds are presented, each with an illustration, and a special box where you can record the initiatives and hit points of various kobolds of that type, so you can quickly keep track of everything in game. Even typical spells used by a kobold dragonmouth are listed here, also in 4E layout. There’s even a sheet of small counters included to print out.

Being a written review, it’s hard to do justice to this product, since it really does have to be seen to be fully appreciated. When 4E came out, there was a lot of talk about what aspects of it could enhance a 3.5 game, and this book showcases some of those extraordinarily well. The simplicity, the innovation, the tactics and ideas presented are all superb, to say nothing of how a group of PCs will never see these kobolds coming – and it’s all still completely 3.5, so you can continue to tweak and fiddle with the stat blocks as you need to. Fantasy Fiends: Kobolds! is a book with 3.5 edition rules, and 4th edition feel.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fantasy Fiends: Kobolds!
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Tankard Tales: Willowbark's
by Peter I. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 12/12/2008 03:43:33

The tavern is one of the, if not the, quintessential meeting places for young and experienced fantasy adventurers alike. I have often wondered why this is, given that there are many better ways to introduce characters to each other that involve more than chance meetings in a tavern. Perhaps it's because the tavern represents an easy way to jump straight into an adventure, or perhaps it is simply because it is the quintessential meeting place that many DMs choose to use it. Whatever your preference of tavern encounters, this product, Tankard Tales - Willowbark's, offers something that turns the tavern from a meeting place into something more - an adventure, adventure location, and a different way to start an adventure.

The product comes as a very well presented pdf file. I've said this before about Myth Merchant Press and it certainly bears repeating - the quality of their presentation is excellent, and they really go the extra mile to include everything that you might need in their product and then some more. Tankard Tales - Willow bark's contains some good and vivid writing, some excellent descriptive material, wonderful plans and tiles for the tavern, and some excellent maps. The layout is very well done, and in a way instantly recognisable as a product for the 4e GSL because of the style and layout of the product. This is another excellently presented and professionally done pdf from Myth Merchant Press.

This 16 page pdf product contains a description of the tavern, details on the core staff of the tavern, and two encounter scenarios associated with the tavern - one of the heroic tier and one of the paragon tier, making this product applicable to most party levels. Scaling should be straightforward if you wanted to use either of these encounter scenarios for a different level. Included with the encounter scenarios are short battlemaps indicating relative positions of the creatures in the encounter, and 1-inch scale tiles that can be used to represent these battlemaps with miniatures on the gaming table. The entire tavern is represented by these tiles, and an additional sheet of objects is included so that you can spice up the encounter with barrels that can be thrown, add obstacles, or just further decorate the tiles that make up the tavern.

This is very much a multi-faceted and open ended kind of product, since the tavern and its NPCs provide more than just background material for the two encounter scenarios. There are other interesting avenues that one could explore, and this allows the DMs imagination to build on what the pdf contains. There's also good opportunity for roleplaying with the core tavern staff, and a handy list of rumours that can easily be expanded on or modified.

The two encounters themselves involve a local adventurer's guild which posts notices and advertisements in the tavern. These allow the adventurers to easily get involved in the two encounter scenarios and even to join the adventurer's guild to further their pursuits of fame, glory or fortune. I do wish that more had been said about this organisation, perhaps fleshing it out so that it could be used more easily in this way. The encounters themselves are interesting and should be fun, one involving a brief journey to another plane of existence, and the other a more straightforward assault and kill the bad guy scenario. The scenarios are well constructed, and I particularly liked the brief overviews given of each encounter, that presents the encounter setup and resolution. Naturally these scenarios contain a handful of new monsters, including a thief apprentice, dire porcupine and a couple of new goblin variants.

Myth Merchant Press have put together a useful tavern with two tavern scenarios and roleplaying opportunities as the characters involve themselves with the staff and their affairs. The product is very well presented, with some great 1-inch scale tiles, and well constructed scenarios that are clearly set up, easy to run, and interesting. The pdf provides enough material to use and run with as is, but also adds in a few other elements that can be used to expand on the material contained in this product. While the tavern is set on the edge of the wilderness, it could easily be placed in another location that might suit the campaign better. Overall, a good product from Myth Merchant Press.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Tankard Tales: Willowbark's
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Sord
by Jeff I. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/20/2008 07:53:03

OK, so back when 3.5 first hit, someone put out a little 4-page PDF that circulated for free that condensed most of the more important charts into little cheat-sheets. And my group has used that ever since.

SORD takes that concept and expands and better organizes the charts providing links, all rules under a heading to one page and a lot of thought put into font and type presentation.

It says it will speed up combat by up to 10-15 minutes. My group already plays out 3.5 combats fast and easy, and yet even I found a few charts in here I remember still having to page-flip to discover during a session.

So for those of us still playing (and continue to play) the 3.5 version fo the World's Most Popular Roleplaying Game, for 2 bucks this is a complete steal and well worth checking out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Sord
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Sord
by Joey V. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 11/15/2008 14:51:29

I just downloaded and printed the SORD up and it is a great document. I can see it helping speeding up the game in a great fashion. anyone who DMs large DND games this is a must have.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Sord
by R G. E. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 09/03/2008 04:51:56

Whenever I run a game I tend to create cribe sheets or rules booklets - luckily SORD saves me the trouble! I have printed SORD out in booklet format, stapled the spine and it now serves as a handy reference that takes up no more space at the table than a character sheet! Absolutely great!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Sord
by Jay S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/20/2008 01:12:03

This will serve as the only DM/GM screen that you will ever need. One of the most amazing products I have come across in a long time. Combat made easy and right at the fingertips. If you have a gaming group and they do any combat at all, then you MUST purchase this product. I will never go to the gaming table without it ever again. Thanks SORD.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Sord
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 07/25/2008 00:02:58

The Game Master’s shield (aka the GM’s screen) has been a part of tabletop fantasy almost since the beginning. Now, for the first time, GMs have a SORD to go with their shield, completing the set. And not a moment too soon.

SORD is the System Operational Reference Digest, from Myth Merchant Press. Made for the 3.5 OGL rules, it aims to collect and reorganize all of the game’s relevant combat information into concise, easy-to-use breakdowns, eliminating (or at least heavily-reducing) page-flipping that grinds games to a halt. Indeed, the book sets the lofty goal of shaving fifteen minutes off of how long it takes you to run a combat encounter! But how well does SORD really present itself? Let’s look under the hood…

From a technical standpoint, the PDF is quite impressive. Barely over a megabyte in size, the PDF is thirty-two pages long, with a page for the cover, a page for the credits/legal/OGL, and a page for the introduction/explanation. All of the other pages are dedicated to the rules. The book has no illustrations (obviously) but does use some color as a means of highlighting certain things. As a nice bonus, the PDF uses layers, allowing you to toggle the color settings to make the book more printer-friendly. Even navigation is easy, as the book has full bookmarks and a hyperlinked table of contents (which it recommends pasting inside your GM shield, so you can reference the rest of the book at-a-glance).

SORD’s layout is, I have to admit, brilliant. The book uses a single-page reference for everything. For example, the first page of rules covers the rules regarding the combat round, and attacks of opportunity. The page has three lightly-colored boxes regarding different information about those topics. Each box has various sub-headings, and each sub-heading has one or more bulleted points (some of which are nested), with significant terms being highlighted. And that’s all in just one page; after that, the next page repeats the process, this time regarding the rules for initiative, readied and delayed actions. It’s pretty clear that the book’s author, Steve Muchow, is a crazy genius, except without being crazy.

Of course, this isn’t to say that SORD is a perfect product. It’s not. It has some things that seem like errors, and other things that I wish had been included but weren’t. For example, the page about actions lists an (expanded) chart regarding what actions provoke AoO’s and which don’t. However, in the column that should say “yes” or “no” regarding provoking AoO’s, there are only “yes” listings, with the fields where “no” should be being blank. This happens in one or two other places as well. Similarly, the attack modifiers page lists the three base attack bonus progression rates, and has which classes use which rate…but there’s no mention of the NPC classes. I found little things like that throughout the book. And finally, materials from the expanded sections of the SRD (namely, the epic and psionic sections) were ignored utterly, which is something of a shame.

Despite these minor points, though, SORD is an incredibly useful book if you’re running 3.5. While I haven’t had the chance to try it out in a game yet, I can easily believe that it’ll live up to its promise to speed up combat by at least fifteen minutes. In fact, even the problems I had with it seem like they’ll be ironed out soon, since in his introduction the author promises to keep fixing problems with SORD as they’re found. I’ve no doubt that once the kinks are worked out, this’ll be a five-star book, but for now there is still some room for improvement (albeit not that much room), so I’m giving it four out of five. In the meantime, GM’s everywhere should put their game to the SORD.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you for the review. I especially like your last sentence! You got right to the point - and I wish I had thought of that line first! ;-) I have a few minor comments: On the Attacks of Opportunity issue. The text is quite dense in areas and saying 'yes' in a box and leaving it blank for 'no' was my way of clearing out a little bit of clutter. There is only one choice or the other (well, a couple of maybes...) and I had to weigh whitespace and readability as well. If I added a dash '-' for no and provide a key, that may fulfill your need for completeness and my need for aesthetics. I am in full agreement with your NPC classes; they need representation as well. I will address that issue on the first revision. I also mention in my first page that SORD is comprehensive, but not exhaustive. I viewed the rules from a 'most useful for players and GMs alike' perspective, and chose what I felt was representative of most play sessions. I knew it would be controversial, and that is why I am willing to support improvements. Thank you for keeping me humble. I will endeavor to achieve that five-star rating quickly! Warm Regards, Steve Muchow Myth Merchant Press.
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I am pleased to announce that version 1.1. of SORD - available now, has addressed this reviewers concerns. It has also added Aquatic and Aerial combat for your gaming pleasure.
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Fantasy Fiends: Kobolds!
by Peter I. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 07/15/2008 09:35:31

When the first sneak peaks of the new 4e ruleset started to appear shortly after the announcement of the new edition, people in various forums on the net started hammering the revised d20 rules as more information about 4e got released. In particular many were complaining that the 3.5e rules were too strict and cumbersome when creating monsters, and that the 4e system somehow liberated people into designing more creative monsters outside of the supposed constraints of the 3.5e system. It is true that the 4e system has shown good and exciting design in monsters, but I don't agree with the sentiment that 3.5e's system was too constrained to achieve was 4e has done. And this product seems to agree with me on that front.

Fantasy Fiends: Kobolds is a short 15 page pdf product that presents kobolds like you've not seen them before. This product is the first in the Fantasy Fiends series of products from Myth Merchant Press and is fully compatible with the revised d20 core rules (3.5e). The product presents 6 new and unique kobolds, using the standard 3.5e rules with some new variations to create exiting and interesting kobolds that can challenge even higher level parties.

Myth Merchant Press is a relatively new pdf publisher, having released their first product, a fantastic adventure called Trouble in Tallreed Waters, less than two months ago. And if they continue the way they are with the two products they've released so far, then I suspect they'll do rather well, providing top class presentation and material for the d20 market. This product looks great, contains fantastic art, reads easily, is well organised, and very well formatted. I was impressed by the effort of presentation that went into the product - it's a top notch effort.

Kobolds in the revised d20 game (3.5e) are fairly standard fare for most PCs. As are most humanoids in fact. And one of the things I constantly hear is that the various humanoid races don't do enough to distinguish between them. This product is a big step towards making the distinction clearer as it presents a set of kobolds (in a style similar to the new edition) using the 3.5e rules that truly feel like kobolds in their mechanics. There are 6 new kobold types presented here - the kobold footman, the kobold grunt, the kobold thrower, the kobold wyrmward, the kobold dragonmouth and the kobold matron. All of them are based on the standard d20 kobold with various PC and NPC classes added, but have added extraordinary abilities, bonus feats and supernatural abilities to make them stand out as more unique creatures and more unique humanoids. These aren't just smaller goblins or orcs - these are kobolds.

Examples of the abilities of these kobolds include a mob mentality that grants bonuses in large numbers of kobolds, the ability to dart around in combat, and the neat ability to gang up on a larger enemy and overpower them. I truly enjoyed what Myth Merchant Press have done with these kobolds and what they've presented in this product. Not only are the new kobolds and new abilities, but the product also briefly details kobold society and ecology, battle tactics, typical encounter groups, new kobold traps and even some very useful kobold counters. I will admit that some of the mechanical changes haven't been done in the smoothest way possible (using spell-like abilities for some things instead of supernatural abilities or feats), but the product does a good job of showing that the d20 ruleset is not in any way constraining on your ability to design good and useful monsters.

I thoroughly enjoyed this product. It's a well presented, well conceived product, and I'm really looking forward to the next releases in the Fantasy Fiends series. The kobolds in these pages will provide good challenges for parties over a wide range of levels, really surprise the players and provide more tactical options than your standard kobold would typically allow. This is a great product, good value for money, and well worth a look at.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Fantasy Fiends: Kobolds!
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Trouble in Tallreed Waters
by Ross C. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/04/2008 06:53:47

What a great product! Very professionally produced, this module gives you a COMPLETE adventure and then adds a set of sidebars that expand upon the story and offer "director's cut" views on the product. Nicely done and I look forward to future products of this type!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Trouble in Tallreed Waters
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Trouble in Tallreed Waters
by Dan M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/19/2008 18:27:52

Myth Merchant Press is an outfit to watch. This, their first adventure module, is very professionally done and is one of the select few which gives you everything you need to play right "out of the box." 52 pages including cover and legal page, it literally gives you everything except dice and players. I assume you have your own printer already to print it... Oh, yes, grab some scissors, you'll need them. And some glue. Yes, scissors and glue. As i said, the module comes with everything, including 21 pages of battlemaps. These 21 pages make up two maps. Gorgeous maps. Add these to their free download The Giddy Ghost and you have every map you need for all the adventure, although the Giddy Ghost is really optional. Then using these maps, each encounter is well laid out, again giving you everything you need toi run that encounter, including even such things as conditions (what does "STUNNED" do?) and statblocks convinently right there ready to use. There are even new (optional) rules to try out. And what if you do not have miniatures? MMP has you covered. There are both foldups and counters for use included. If the ones included do not appeal to you (they do not for me, the only minor minus I have here...) links to websites providing free paper minis or counters are provided. Like I said, everything is covered.

Oh yeah, the adventure is good too. :)

Believe me, This is a great buy for a 3.5 one-shot (pregen characters are included too.) or to start a new campaign.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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