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Article – D&Diversity. A pinch of genius!

July 29, 2014 by Paco G. Jaen

I think Wizards of the Coast had a pinch of genius moment when they included the diversity paragraph in the new edition of D&D. Pure genius!

I don’t know if it was accidental or if it was a calculated risk, but my goodness it’s paying off!

Why do I say this? Because everyone is talking about it. People who were looking forward to D&D are talking about it. People who don’t care about D&D are talking about it. People who didn’t want to care about D&D talk about it. People who like the diversity clause are talking about it. People who dislike it are talking about it.

People are talking about D&D. The diversity clause is not the only thing they’re talking about, but it certainly is making a lot of noise.

And that’s good!

I personally believe the inclusion of that paragraph is a good idea. People argue it’s not necessary and I could agree with that. It doesn’t really make or break the game. It’s not pivotal and thus is not necessary.

I think it’s a good idea to have a reminder, though. Although plenty of people have said “this paragraph is telling us we can play the game as we have played all along”, most players, without some sort of prompting or reminder, just fall back into the binary heteronormative paradigm and leave it like that. Most people have no hidden agenda or try to avoid diversity; it’s simply that falling back into “normality” is a very easy thing to do.

Regardless, though, this is an absolutely brilliant marketing technique that’s paying dividends because there’s so little to be upset about, it’s controversial enough to be interesting and long lasting, and it’s therefore raising awareness of the game.

Whether this paragraph is necessary or not, not many people are saying it’s a bad idea. Or that it is a bad thing. I don’t think many people are complaining about the notion of having diversity in their games; people are questioning the need for the reminder more than anything else and a few are resenting they feel they’re being told how to play the game.

Either way, to come up – even if it’s been accidentally – with a means to make your audience talk about your product for a reason that’s controversial but not pernicious or a mistake… well done WOTC!

I think this is something a lot of designers out there should take note of and learn something!

Mythic Menagerie: Ravagers of Time

June 14, 2012 by Paco G. Jaen

By Thilo Graf

This mini-monster-manual-pdf from Super Genius Gamesis 19 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page introduction, 1 page SRD, leaving 16 pages of content, so let’s check out this latest installment!

Due to the special nature of the critters herein, we are first introduced to some basic concepts: The time-stream, the new temporal subtype and the aevum and motes of time. The latter two concepts were introduced in the stellar Genius Guides to Time Thief and Time Warden and while the beasts herein utilize these rules, everything necessary to run the monsters is contained in this pdf. Additionally, time-travelling creatures tend to have weird perceptions and problems communicating with beings that have a simple 3-dimensional perspectives and thus a small table is included for the DM to devise strange ramblings and concerns: “Trapped by 13 o’clock, indeed!”

After this neat setting of the stage, we draw the curtains and jump into the first creature entry: The Chronal Dragon, a new type of primal dragon. While reading this entry, I was first sceptical and then started grinning – wide. Remove oneself from the time-stream, becoming temporarily invulnerable? Check. Cannibalize foe’s motes of time and personal temporal energies? Check! Secure areas by making a temporal moebius loop? Check! Breath attack that sends foes into the future? Check! We also get 3 sample statblocks and all necessary pieces of information to make chronal dragons of all age categories. This is one of the scarce additions to dragonkind that actually makes sense and I thoroughly enjoyed the new breed. (Hint: If you want to convert “War of the Burning Sky” to PFRPG, a great wyrm chronal dragon makes for a vastly cooler fight when used to substitute “time” in “The Beating of the Aquiline Heart”.)

The next beats is another high-level adversary is the Horological Golem (CR 15). The golem comes with UTTERLY awesome signature abilities: When damaged, it backlashes with a slow-effect. A blast that can change the age and even the position in the time-stream of the victims and the ability to inflict wounds over and over on his foes. Perhaps the coolest, most unique golem I’ve read in quite some time – plus: Comes with a kick-ass artwork!

On the low-end of the gamut is the leaping insect (CR 1): These poisonous, tick/spider-hybrids can not only jump in time, but also (unintentionally, on a crit), call reinforcements by transporting future or past hive mates. Disturbing, alien and a rather nasty critter. Again: Well done!

Speaking of alien: The Nasr (CR 17) is alien indeed: A gargantuan eagle’s body with 3 lamprey-like heads, they fly through time, infest foes with rot and then suck the rotting flesh from their victims. EWWWW! Now if that doesn’t creep your players out…

….then perhaps a rather traditionally gothic horror might do the trick, one like the CR 7 Temporal Wraith. These spectres may not only age you by touch, they can also wrench creatures from alternate timelines to fight along their sides. Worse, their very presence makes time unstable and it possible for you to e.g. spent a minute in battle with one and have a year go by. Great idea for DM! Now here’s another one, by yours truly: Remember the excellent Castle Forlorn boxed set for Ravenloft? Multiple versions of one dungeon, time travel etc., all to finally figure out a way to slay its master and escape? Just add the time warden’s time travel-spell to the wraith’s roster of powers and have fun with a neat basic creature to recreate similar experiences!

The beetle-eyed reptilian Timestream Assasssins (CR 10) are intelligent, deadly being living in the timestream and following unfathomable goals – oh, and their strikes can take away your actions! And that’s, again, just one of multiple extremely cool signature abilities. (Motes of time being one of them…)

And then, there’s the 3-eyed Wampus Cat (CR 5): These cats can create safe lairs in the time-stream, from which they can surface as either allies or ambush predators. Oh, their gaze might slow you and they also have access to motes of time…

Then there’s the supplemental material: The Time Screen is a way to enter and exit the timestream via a frame and the temporal anchor and lock-spells are nice to keep those nasty temporal bastards from jumping.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Laoyut adheres to SGG’s 2-column standard and each monster comes with a b/w-artwork, most of which range at the upper level of quality, though the piece for the chronal dragon didn’t put awe in me, I e.g. loved the golem. The pdf unfortunately has no bookmarks, which is a pity. Yeah. Ähem. I’ll come out and say it: Sam Hing has surpassed himself. This installment of Mythic Menagerie is literally all killer of the highest calibre. This is by far the best pdf in the whole line, surpassing even the excellent, more recent installments. Multiple signature abilities per creature, iconic adversaries and multiple adventure hooks practically ingrained in the creatures, these beings do what scarcely a monster manages these days – evoke a sense of jamais-vu, a nouveau frissant that immediately gets the creative juices flowing. If you own the Genius Guides to Time Thief/Warden, this is a no-brainer. If you’re even remotely considering temporal peculiarities – check this out. And if you’re tired of PCs bashing foes to pieces without using their brains, check this out. A stellar offering, an unbeatable price, a new standard for small monster-books. This Mythic Menagerie puts the bar higher for what to expect from monster-pdfs. If you don’t give this a try, it will be your loss. My final verdict will be a very easily-given 5 stars + Endzeitgeist seal of approval – scarcely have I had so few doubts about which final verdict to pick. An all-out stellar job!

Endzeitgeist out.

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With a Bullet Point: 7 Cure Light Wounds Feats

June 8, 2012 by Paco G. Jaen

By Thilo Graf

This pdf from Super Genius Games is 7 pages long, 1 page front cover/introduction, 1 page editorial/SRD, 1 page content presenting 7 new feats that expand the usefulness of the cure light wounds”-spell, let’s check this out!

The feats are:

Bolstering Cure: If you heal more than the target’s max hp, he retains the superfluous points as temporary HP. (No, they don’t stack.)
Cloak of Curing: This feat enables you to hold the charge of a cure light wounds spell for a limited number of rounds and do other things (like casting spells) without expending it. Neat!
Lay on cure: Once a round, cast the spell as a move action instead of a standard action. I’d usually start ranting about double-casts, but the alignment-restriction of the feat as well as its limit to one 1st-level spell makes this an ok choice.
Lingering Cure: When casting the spell modified by metamagic, the spell heals as if not penalized by the augmentation, but slower over multiple rounds.
Moderate Mastery: Extends benefits from these feats to cure moderate wounds spells.
Shared Cure: Lets you split the healing you deliver between yourself and the recipient. Neat!
Reinforced Cure: Allows you to add a limited selection of beneficial 0-level spells to your cures.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to SGG’s no-frills bullet-points 3-column layout. The pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length. I’ve said it before in my review of Misfit Studios’ stellar “Superior Fantasy Synergy” and SGG’s “Spiritual Weapon Feats” – I consider the idea of synergy between spells and feats a neat one, especially if a DM wants to reward players with a feat rather than loot. In contrast to the Spiritual Weapon-feats, though, these ones lose some of their appeal at higher levels – even with the expanded options. That being said, moderate mastery alleviates this gripe somewhat and reinforced cure, bolstering cure and Cloak of Curing are all rather cool feats. Due to being less useful in mid-to higher levels, though, I feel like I have to settle for a final verdict of “only” 4 stars for this neat little pdf.

Endzeitgeist out.

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The Genius Guide to Relics of the Godlings

June 3, 2012 by Paco G. Jaen

By Thilo Graf

This pdf from Super Genius Games is 19 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page SRD/editorial, leaving 17 1/3 pages of content – quite a bunch, so let’s check this out!

So, what exactly are those relics? To put it simply, the relics contained herein are magic items that increase their prowess over the course of the levels of your character, thus, they essentially grow with you. If you’re familiar to the concept: They have essentially grown from 3.5’s legacy items and got rid of the penalties that made the latter unusable. The pdf opens with an extensive discussion on how to use relics in your game and also provides a 4-feat-chain to gain access to the powers of the relic, though the chain is optional and serves as an optional balancing factor for wary and conservative DMs – neat. After these considerations and alternate approaches, we are introduced to 8 sample relics influenced by real-world mythology – from the Aegis to the Gjallerhorn and the perhaps lesser-known berserker-blade Nageling, which is probably inspired by Dietrich von Bern’s blade Naglering, we get iconic, cool items that offer some kind of new ability at each level – i.e. the items have a20-level-progression just like your PCs.

The true masterpiece of this pdf, though, would be the rudimentary tool-kit presented in the last 3 pages that enables you to design your own relic-weapons. To provide further guidance, a sample weapon template is included in the deal to give you a better example of how to design such a weapon. I think more of these templates would have been useful to say the least.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to SGG’S 3-column, full-colour standard and the cover art is beautiful, while the interior art is ok b/w – nothing to write home about, though. The pdf has no bookmarks, which is a pity. All right, I’ll come right out and say it: I’m a SUCKER for scaling magic items. I LOVE them. And the items in this pdf are iconic, cool and make me want to have them. They also provide a new ability each level, which is awesome. Even better, each of the items comes with at least one ability that is not only cool, but rather unique and tied to the item. Sounds awesome all around, doesn’t it? Well…yes and no. You see, Purple Duck Games has a whole series devoted to legacy-style items, the “Legendary…”-series. Some of the installments of said series feature original pieces of b/w-artwork for each item. While legendary items don’t offer an ability each level (here, the SGG-book is superior), they come with requirements (so not every dverp can use the items) and also feature background stories and lore-sections, something the SGG-book falls flat on. While these items feel like legendary treasures, they do lack this distinct quality, the story, the tragedy, the triumph that makes the wielder feel like being a continuation of one item’s legendary destiny. Furthermore, the items herein, while iconic, are, as far as I could tell, derived from real-world mythology and while I love the unique mechanic representations of their powers, I somewhat felt that they lacked more original pieces of equipment.

To sum it up: The relics per se are great, I love the diy-toolkit and would have loved to see that one expanded further. An ability each level is better than in the PDG-supplements. BUT: Each PDG-installment offers vastly more weapons/items/shields/armour, and provides lore and background story sections. Here, the purple ducks clearly win, especially with their latest offerings (Legendary IV to VI). How, then, do I rate this? It’s a good file, to be sure. It’s crunch is excellent, it’s by SGG, after all. But it lacks the spark that made me love “Legendary Armours” or “Legendary 5: Exotic Weapons”. The innovation of providing an ability each level and the different approaches are neat, but in the end, in spite of the excellent relics herein, I was left feeling somewhat dissatisfied. Thus, due to the stellar PDG-files, I’m “only” settling for a final verdict of 4 stars – a great resource for legacy-style weapons, but as written, it can’t hold a torch to the cream of the “Legendary”-series.

Endzeitgeist out.

The Genius Guide to Relics of the Godlings from the Fallen Star is available from:

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Ranger Options: Knacks of Nature

May 3, 2012 by Paco G. Jaen

By Thilo Graf

This pdf from Super Genius Games is 11 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page editorial/SRD, leaving 9 1/3 pages of content, so let’s check out what SGG has cooked up for the rangers!

Rangers have often been neglected by the core-rules and, to be honest, never felt that unique to me and favoured enemies and terrain always felt rather…boring to me – it is here that the central innovation of this pdf comes in: 19 so-called “knacks” are introduced – essentially, they can be selected instead of just about any of their abilities and this supreme versatility must have been a true challenge to balance. It is the iconicity of them, though, that makes knacks a MUST for any campaign out there: Ever wanted to grab onto a giant or similar large foe and ride along while hacking away? Get the new Attach-knack! Ever wanted a truly awesome animal companion? With the Beast King Animal Companion, your companion becomes a mutation with access to a bonus feat or 1-point evolutions of the eidolon and improved stats! Want to track like the stereotypical Native-american with an ear to the ground? There’s a knack for that! There are also ones for rangers who prefer plants, vermin and elementals, which was kind of what I expected. In fact, there’s a mini-knack-tree that lets you transcend into an elemental knight at the 20th level. Even better, extensive advice on how to create new knacks from archetypes with special regard to the skirmisher is provided.

After that, we get 10 new spells, including a ranger’s version of explosive runes, spells dealing with scent-based tracking (and thwarting it) and a great spell to become inaudible, which is essentially a hearing-based version of invisibility. Dealing with unfavourable terrain is also covered via spells. All in all a solid selection of new spells, none of which felt overpowered.

The pdf also provides 3 new archetypes that actually deserve to exist: The Explorer is a hybrid of ranger and rogue (including trap finding and sneak attack against favoured enemies or when in favoured terrain), while the master herbalist studies more terrain than foes and is rewarded by being able to utilize herbs to get bonuses to skill-checks and even learn a limited amount of extracts and low-level formulae. Finally, the Tercel is essentially the nature-version of the Inquisitor, including an expanded spell-list. All of the 3 archetypes fill their respective roles admirably and can be considered definite winners.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any glitches. Layout adheres to SGG’s 3-column standard and the front cover is so beautiful, I wish we’d get a one page version without the header. The pdf is fully bookmarked, which is another plus. Ranger knacks are a stroke of genius and I wish, oh how I wished there were more of them in this book. Seriously, the options alone are worth the low asking price, even if you’re like me and are bored to hell by elemental-ascension abilities/PrCs/whatever. The spells are rock-solid, though I only considered Inaudibility to be truly brilliant. It is with the 3 new archetypes that bridge the gap and redefine what rangers can be that I’m truly at ease with this pdf – while some of the knacks were not absolutely up to the level of others and while not all spells wowed me, the vast majority of content in this pdf is of a quality that puts the bar very high indeed. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to rate this any other way but giving it 5 stars and the Endzeitgeist seal of approval – a must-buy for everyone not wholly satisfied with the ranger and for everyone who considered the ideas mentioned even remotely intriguing. Now let’s hope for more knacks in the future!

Endzeitgeist out.

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