Fantastic. Nothing better than handing an item over to my players and it makes it so easy for them to remember what they have.

Much less so than the elemental cards, the text here can get tight. But with a good printer, this isn't a problem.

Text is a little tight, but if you have a good printer these are a life saver!

There aren't many covers in this format, and to get four in the pack is deligtful. Highly recommend, especially if your cover art can "pop out" of the center area.

Protip: if you want to make the center area larger, you can crop both halves and adjust accordingly! I can't do that with many of these cover projects!

Downloaded for free, read a third of it and decided too much work went into this to not pay for it. This is fantastically put together and even if you don't run this setting, most of the player options should work in any campaign! Solid material right here and the production values are stellar.

The idea of a common magic item (as introduced in Xanathar's Guide) is that it's a mostly cosmetic item (or something that just makes your player go "oh, that's neat") and this book is chock full of them. As far as I can see, there's no balance issues that would cause any DM distress, and the overall production value is great. Good job!

Converting a solid amount of material from older editions to suit the 5e design process, Alex has created a supplement that will undoubtedly find use at many tables. While we've only had a chance to use a fraction of the content from the book, so far nothing has caused our games to become broken. Two thumbs up!

It wouldn't be fair to review these as a whole, as some of this content is really great, and others less.

Barbarian: While I love all the abilities individually, I think the 10th level one doesn't fit with this theme. Overall though, a solid 4/5.

Bard: I'm not a fan of this one. It grants you two proficiencies that aren't in the game (ventriloquism and puppeteering) where as it should give performance and when doing either of those two uses of performance, you double your proficiency bonus. The other abilities are named well, but don't really thematically fit the themes of control and subversion. A 2/5 (because it IS balanced)

Cleric: While I've seen the travel domain done many times, this is a pretty good one. The fast paced ability is neat, granting you and one creature benefitting from a concentration spell you cast upon it get 10 foot bonus movement. That's cool. The other levels of the class are equally well themed. 4/5 because the capstone isn't that interesting and it's been done in other classes.

Druid: Swarm style druids are always neat. The cool thing abotu this one, your allies ARE your swarm instead of being made of a swarm (although there is some of that in there too). 5/5 for a very comprehensive, balanced, and well themed archetype.

Fighter: It's... ok. Thematically, it lets you use unarmed and improvised weapons exceptionally well. And it does so in a balanced way. However there are a number of abilities that allow you to enact a variety of status ailments upon your foes. How those work is attacking, and if you hit you replace your damage with the effect but traditionally conditions are applied via saving throws. It might be fine, and I'm overly concerned but I'd watch the table closely if you allow this one. 3/5 for caution (but could be a 4/5 if it really is balanced).

Monk: The meteor hammer is one of my favourite chinese weapons, so I might be biased on this one. Overall I'd give this a 4/5 because honestly, it doesn't use the action economy. It's a bunch of "if you hit you can expend x to do y". There's very little variety here, but it DOES look balanced and seem like it would play well. I just don't know if it would be FUN.

Paladin: Right off the bat, the second divinity ability knocks a star off for me because of awkward wording on the group effect. It shouldn't be "total cr equal to or less than half your level", it should be a number of targets equal to your Cha mod. But that's not bad, a 4/5 is still good and the archetype is more or less balanced (sacred polyglot letting you "only take half a minute to read one page of text"... that's oddly specific and... really it's just odd.)

Ranger: A bounty hunter. And it's really well done. However, a 3/5 on this one, as Lone Wanderer granting a feat and if you already have it, a free feat, is bad design. Feats are an optional rule set. Better to have just recreated the effect here (and then have a sidebar about if you use feats and already have taken it) and not worry about the interaction. Add to that "Spur of the Moment" basically gives free HP when you're NOT hit. These are minor issues and if you or your DM understands why I took stars away, this archetype is probably one of the top three in the book.

Rogue: This is a solid 5/5, although of all the archetypes it's the most in need of an edit and polish pass. I see what the author was doing and it's great!

Sorcerer: I'm not sure how one gets abberant blood in their family lines, or rather I'd rather not think about it, but as a sorcerer it makes for an interesting archetype. Telepathy, psychic damage, madness... this is exaclty what it says it is. Overall I give it a 4/5 on a personal level, or a 5/5 objectively (I'm not a fan of "edge" or "dark" archetypes, I believe your 'darkness' should be roleplayed not 100% mechanical.

Warlock: An ooze patron is a neat idea. I'm not sure how balanced this one is, but it does let you split yourself into two creatures and that's really cool. I say a 5/5 for coolness, but a 3/5 for balance (without further testing).

Wizard: 2/5 for the "time wizard". The mechanics are awkward, ranging from barely notable to "holy living heck". Now the theme here works really well here, the chosen mechanics DO represent time travel.

The book is in heavy need of editing and polish, but overall the ideas presented in here are excellent and can be adapted to play at nearly any table. But overall, it's a solid product as it is right now.

What I expected was updating the old (and really excellent) supplement "Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue" into 5e. Which would be fine. That's actually something I was considering doing myself. Instead, we get a new catalogue with items all designed for summer (think like summer hats, zinc oxide to prevent sunburns, and other summery things).

That's right, all fluff, very little in terms of rules. The rules that are present all make sense and are so situational, they could never really break game balance. If I had a critism about the supplement, it's only that the form factor of the page (which matches the original) is a little cramped and all the illustrations have a white background instead of being translucent (which would make it look like the art was drawn onto the page texture). These are tiny little problems and do not detract enough to warrant removing a star.

Gonna admit, at first I thought this was going to be some weak product designed around the idea that the dragon heist faction quests are boring. I get it that not everyone likes the quests, but they're outlines for the DM to fill out. Instead, here we don't get the author complaining about W:DH's quests, but just supplying a solid array of quests for each faction. Now I've read two quests for each faction, so I can't speak to the entire supplement, but everything in here seems to be well written and is more or less complete.

Note that if you're expecting this supplement to be filled with maps and multi branching quest lines, that's not what it is. This is to supply some short side quests for your heroes and that's it.

Bringing back one of the most memorable mechanics in 4th edition (and in all honestly, one of the few mechanics everyone seemed to agree was a great idea), this is a great summary of how to utilize it in your games. Examples are included, the product is short and simple, and there's no cruft. This is exactly what 5e should be about: modular components that can be plugged in if you want to use them.

So if I could, this product would be rated 4.5 for 2 reasons:

1. The artwork is not consistant in any measure of the word. That's fine, as on the guild we have far fewer resources available than big publishers. However there's a lot of very disparate artwork here. Normally that wouldn't be worth 0.5 removed, but there's another problem:

2. About 1/3rd the book could be useless to you. If you choose to have the mech suits (ATUMs), then that 1/3rd will be useful as it gives advice on how to use them, the mechanics of them, and how they can be used in your campaign. So for people who don't care about ATUMs, then 2/3rds of the book is still useful but if someone really likes them, only 1/3rd of the book is devoted to them. It feels like this should have been patterned off of a Shadowrun book where 100% of the 100+ pages was ATUM, and then a second book of ATUM adjunct material could be paired with it.

So those caveats out of the way, I still ranked the book 5/5 and for good reason: what I was picking up as a curiosity shows a deep understanding of the finer points of game design and balance. The spells, magic items (with one exception), and classes are all fantastically balanced and fit the flavor of the supplement. In short, while this book sells itself as a "we have mechs, but for 5e D&D", it has MUCH more than that.

I highly recommend if you're interested in concepts presented, you pick the supplement up. It's really well written and from the credits it's obviously thoroughly playtested and vetted.

It's 46 pre-made antagonists for your game. Exactly what it says on the box and with this many writers, it's hard to say there isn't something here for every type of DM that exists. The great thing is, they're all antagonists but they're not all villains. Each has their own goals and plots, and that might mean they do shady things but not 100% EVIL things. There's a great amount of variety in this product, I highly recommend it!

So I'm the sort of DM that loves additional systems that feel like they belong. Walrock's Fortresses, Minor Skills, or the big Equipment guide from the guild are all great examples of this. I expected an expanded lifestyles to be the same: take an existing system and provide something that slots into position, feeling like a more indepth version of WOTC's content. This is not quite there yet.

Instead, you'll see a variety of perks and drawbacks for living at one of the existing lifestyles presented in D&D. Since you must have a lifestyle expense in the game, this means basically the supplement is giving you free stuff. You can spend downtime trying to make a contact (entirely dependant upon which lifestyle you are currently living), it adds 'prestige' as a social marker (it amounts to a mild random roll), and perk points (except for the two lowest lifestyles, they get no points).

The perk points are spent on rooms, things like cellars or auditoriums. Basically, by living, your domicile becomes nicer. I've seen rulesets similar to this but the fact that players can change their lifestyles weekly (adventurers have so much gold, after all, that changing lifestyles is trivial in all but the earliest levels) means it doesn't feel like it fits. Perhaps if there was more to this aspect, like giving penalties for switching lifestyles.

I recommend the author give another pass over the product. What's here is good, but feels like there's a more cohesive idea in their head than on the page. Take a look at Walrock's Fortresses product and Durnan's Guide to Tavernkeeping from the Adept program. These products maintained a clear vision and every part of the product contributed to that final output. This is a good product, but I don't feel it's a finished product.

A solid product that gives you exactly what you want on the tin. You're getting handouts that look like quest boards, and very in depth writeups. You'll still need to do a little legwork as the DM (here's a hint: you can ad hoc a lot of them if you just have a dozen or so maps ready to go, with the monster manual in hand) to fully flesh everything out but these are fantastic as they are or as inspiration for larger side quests.