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The best products are those that achieve a balance between the flavor text (the fluff) and the mechanics of the game system (the crunch). The crunch acts as the framework for how the thing presented will function in your game, with the fluff making it evocative and interesting. It’s an area that Rite Publishing specializes in; but sometimes errors slip in – the crunch may have errors, or the fluff may not sync up with the mechanics perfectly. Unfortunately, both of those happen in The Hero’s Bastard, marring an otherwise great product for your Pathfinder game.
The book is a short one, being eight pages long and focusing on a single monster. Despite its brevity, however, it uses bookmarks, which is a pleasant surprise. The art is (with the exception of the borders on the cover) all black and white, with borders around the pages.
The book opens with the stats for the morekareth (which means “the hero’s bastard” in a game language), a CR 12 monster. Unfortunately, I started seeing ... [read full review]
Rating:  [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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After eagerly reading through Feats 101 this morning, I wanted to send it to other publishers who are making books of Feats to show them how it is done. Feats 101 is a true feats supplement for the Pathfinder System. The 30 page supplement is neatly filled with 101 feats to enhance your characters. It is the best book of feats released for the system so far.
Feats 101, written by Steven D. Russell and published by Rite Publishing, is delicately laid out. A feat table precedes the feat listing, listing the feats in alphabetical order, with exception for feat chains, which are listed with their preceding feat. The table is written very concisely. Whereas many feat books attempt to save space by briefly, and often inaccurately, posting a blurb description of the feat in such a table, Feats 101 goes the extra mile of including at least a two sentence explanation of the feat function. Not to be outdone, the layout also includes useful bookmarks that allow the reader to navigate by alphab ... [read full review]
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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Everybody loves a good monster, and everybody loves a challenging and exciting battle where fortunes sway back and forth until through sheer brilliance the PCs finally prevail. And one of the beauties of RPGs in general is that there is infinite choice in battle - you can use a variety of tactics, you have a variety of combat and magical options, you have terrain to exploit and you can even run away. Essentially, a good battle and a good monster will allow you to dabble in all these aspects of combat, where each round is different from the last. I mention this because The Hero's Bastard deals with a new monster that effectively takes one of those listed options away - the option to run. When dealing with the The Hero's Bastard, or Morekareth, it's not fight or flight, but just fight. And that changes the ball game quite a bit.
The Hero's Bastard is a short 8 page pdf product presenting a new monster for the Pathfinder RPG. The product comes as a single pdf file, and is professionall ... [read full review]
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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Fantastic Maps: Tree Bridge, is a very specific map, that of a massive tree bridge that runs between a series of four waterfalls. It includes an overview image that also includes an illustrated view of what the overall effect is. This is a very specific maps and probably only has a few utilities to it, but this is not a bad thing. For example, Paizo has a series of map products that are not tiles but flip mats and these are non-changable. They are useful for their primary purpose and for revisiting that local.
In this instance, I could easily see this tree bridge belonging to an eladrin outpost that leads to the Fey Realms and the first use would be the players encountering the fey and the second the players encountering something worse than the fey.
As far as the tiles, the 62 page product, very low priced at $1.35, includes full color tiles as well as gray scale tiles. For the price, the tiles can't be beat. ... [read full review]
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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A tip of the hat to Ravenloft's "Dread Companions" in the spirit of Studio Arthaus' rendition of the Land of Mists. While some GMs might argue that the Agate Companion is perhaps "too good for its price", players who think they can use it as a mere "cheap boost" to their animals will soon find themselves in a destructive relationship the likes of 80's novel Christine. Giving the GM full control of your animal companion under the premise of making your life difficult comes with a price. Your closest friend might soon become your undoing. ... [read full review]
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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It’s always a difficult balancing act to try something edgy. Play it too safely, and you make a mockery of the fact that you’re trying to do something outside of the proverbial comfort zone. Make it too out there, and it becomes reviled for how awful it presents itself. Worst of all is when you get tagged for both at the same time, as some possible customers are offended while others just roll their eyes and move on. While there aren’t that many topics that are able to evoke such a reaction, abortion tends to lie near the top of the list. Perhaps it’s for that reason that Rite Publishing has titled its new line “Monsters of Taboo,” with the first up being the eponymous Taker of the Unborn.
The book is a very short one, being only five pages long, of which only two are about the actual creature itself. Notwithstanding the subtle use of color, the entire product is black and white, and the only illustration is the one on the cover, though it’s reproduced in the interior of the book. A ... [read full review]
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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The Ur-kasti Deta or Taken of the Unborn is by itself an interesting concept with many role playing possibilities... of course the scenarios that come to my mind are darker than the light hearted commentaries of the designer.
I see dark quests and adventure hooks that can be used both for a horror or a very dark campaign where the heroes have either to protect an unborn child or recover it.
The Ur-kasti Deta are not by itself tough... but their abilities make them difficult to stop, so it can be pretty frustrating for players to confront them.
It also may seem arbitrary by the DM to get the PCs pregnant... even more if its a male character... but how to use this creatures is the province of every distinct DM.
I see a very concrete, complicate encounter, but it can be a lot more. a CE version of this monster can easily be agent of darker powers: The Unseelie courts as they exchange fae with mortal children, or they can be en Golarion servants of Lamashtu, delivering monstrou ... [read full review]
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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When Rite Publishing announced that they were going to produce an adventure path for Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved Variant Players Handbook I was pretty stoked. To be honest, my days of creating my own campaign materials from whole cloth are long gone. I'm just too busy to fully commit the time to make my creations rewarding enough to pull it off. My players are pretty finicky, with a mix of very well versed and experienced to just fell off the turnip truck, and just getting through the sessions without distractions is a constant battle. It sounded awesome, but I was a little reluctant to invest. It wasn't because I hadn't seen the quality of product that Rite Publishing releases, I have been overjoyed with the stuff I have purchased so far, but because those releases were more of a point solution than something that required consistency, commitment and long term planning. I didn't really want to commit sight unseen, since the investment was more than a simple adventure.
Then this pla ... [read full review]
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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This new delivery by Rite Publishing on their series “The Magic Items Evolved” proves to be an indeed very useful 3.x tool, especially if placed within the context of The Diamond Throne® Campaign Setting (DT).
In simple words, it provides the player/DM with 13 new magical objects of various levels (from 4th to 23rd), which are thoroughly described in order to fit in the DT Campaign Setting, as well as any other fantasy setting with some tweaks.
All entries present interesting options for players and DMs alike. In the case of players, the items supply their characters with new, powerful additions to their arsenal. For DMs, it makes available magical items which can be placed in the context of any ongoing campaign and become central in its story—if the DM wishes so!—mainly because they are described in such great detail that they cannot be overlooked.
Now, if the items are used in the context of a DT campaign their usefulness is even further increased, thanks to the use of the s ... [read full review]
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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Disclaimer: The reviewer was given a complimentary copy for review. Furthermore, this is not a play test review.
Items Evolved: Races and Classes, by Rite Publishing, is a product that showcases 12 new magic items for use in an Arcana Evolved game as well as your usual D20 setting. Within the slim and artfully done 8 pages, holds a myriad of details about these unique items.
The items are broken down into the following sections:
*Price, Body Slot, Caster Level, Aura, Activation, Weight: Simple D20 statistics that govern how the item was created, where it’s located on the paper doll, and other basic details of the item
*Lore: This gives the PC a chance to learn who made this, where it was last seen, and other flavor text to help flesh out this item to make it special.
*Abilities: What the item does, this can range from simple armor that gives the wearer DR all the way to use of racial/class abilities one more time per day
*Prerequisites: What you need to use or create the item
... [read full review]
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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Disclaimer: The reviewer was given a complimentary copy for review. Furthermore, this is not a play test review.
Monsters of Verdune, by Rite Publishing, is a monster supplement for Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved variant rule system. Detailed within the 28 pages are 9 monsters and 2 templates to use with not only the 3.0/3.5 rule set but other gaming systems that handle such things as hero points, insanity loss, and DR for Armor to name but a few. The book does not require you to have the Arcana Evolved as it is perfectly useable for a D20 3.x gaming system but one can see where access to the book can aid in a few sections for skills or abilities that may not be explained in each monsters section.
The monsters in each book are broken down into the following sections:
*Stat blocks pertaining the creatures abilities, attacks, save, etc
* Tactics of how a monster acts in each combat
* Description of what said monster looks like as an excerpt from a book, someone reading from a battle ... [read full review]
Rating:  [3 of 5 Stars!] |
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Rogue’s Gallery is an interesting and original scenario for those moments in which you need a quick way into the dark and seedy side of society, and still have some kind of net under their feet… at least until they anger someone important.
Maybe the most attractive feature of the Tavern would be the fact that it offers the possibility for a lot of interesting open options and alternatives beyond the hooks presented in the document… from patrons you can add… to the mystery behind the owners of the place.
Something open to debate would be the narrative perspective, since it’s the 1st person of an adventurer, it lets us understand and feel the place much better, but others would complain for the lack of objectivity of the narrator.
The map (which is great) makes for an interesting place with lots of opportunities for cloak & dagger encounters or a noir scene.
My only personal critic would be for part of the art, that while good… some of it is entirely unoriginal. ... [read full review]
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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To be honest, I rarely think about the cartographer of the maps I use in my games. Partially because the publishers rarely promote the individual cartographer, instead relying more so on branding their name.
However, Jonathan Roberts, is one of those artists that should get billing above the publisher’s name. Roberts is the artist of the Fantastic Maps series, a series of maps that have rejuvenated the 2-d map PDF market.
Ever since 0ones stopped publishing realistic battlemaps, the market has been skim on quality detail maps. Roberts Fantastic Maps were introduced in early 2009, and despite the inexpensive price, are some of the most intricately detailed maps to be released in some time.
Because of the similar high quality of each of the map products, this review will cover the entire series released so far.
The Fantastic Maps series is reminiscent of well made fantasy anime. With thick layers of color displayed in a somewhat whimsical quality. The pixels jump off the ... [read full review]
Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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To be honest, I rarely think about the cartographer of the maps I use in my games. Partially because the publishers rarely promote the individual cartographer, instead relying more so on branding their name.
However, Jonathan Roberts, is one of those artists that should get billing above the publisher’s name. Roberts is the artist of the Fantastic Maps series, a series of maps that have rejuvenated the 2-d map PDF market.
Ever since 0ones stopped publishing realistic battlemaps, the market has been skim on quality detail maps. Roberts Fantastic Maps were introduced in early 2009, and despite the inexpensive price, are some of the most intricately detailed maps to be released in some time.
Because of the similar high quality of each of the map products, this review will cover the entire series released so far.
The Fantastic Maps series is reminiscent of well made fantasy anime. With thick layers of color displayed in a somewhat whimsical quality. The pixels jump off the ... [read full review]
Rating: [4 of 5 Stars!] |
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