Traps & Treachery has received more use in my D&D games than any book outside of the core rules.

Originally Published March 14th, 2002

If a publisher walked up to me and said, “Justin, I want to produce a D20 sourcebook. What should I do first?”

Then I would say: “Buy a copy of Traps & Treachery so you can see how to do it right.”

CONTENTS

Traps & Treachery is a 172-page, hardback D20 supplement which retails for $24.95. Although printed in black and white, this makes it roughly equivalent to the Monster Manual in terms of content. So the simplest question to ask is: Will this book prove to be as useful a reference as the Monster Manual?

In my opinion, the answer to that is a definitive yes.

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Traps & Treachery. Players who may find themselves pitted against these fiendish traps should read no further.

Traps: Undoubtedly the centerprise of Traps & Treachery are the traps. There are seventy pages of these – including basic mechanical traps and magical traps. A few examples:

Blackstone’s Clever Cage is designed to imprison trespassers, rather than killing them. Simple traps like these can provide a welcome change of pace, particularly at lower levels – where abandoned traps of this variety can serve as minor encounters, without actually draining any significant resources from the party.

Devilish Dungeon Double Slide is designed to split parties up while moving them to deeper and more dangerous areas of a dungeon. This can cause problems if you’re not prepared to run two groups simultaneously, but can pay big dividends if you are.

One Last Coin… sometimes even the simplest of temptations can carry large consequences. In this case, a single coin is being used to seal away a demon.

Blackstone’s Confining Conundrum shrinks the character as they fall down a shaft which diminishes in size right along with them. At the bottom, however, they are returned to full size – essentially trapping them in the room they come to rest in.

Deep Dwarf Darknetter is triggered by the presence of light, making it a perfect trap for all those underground races which do without it.

Puzzles: This section is short, but shouldn’t be undervalued. Logic puzzles, math puzzles, word puzzles, and chess puzzles are all given – along with some unique challenges and tests.

Trap Design: Several people I know have disparaged this chapter as “worthless.” I, on the other hand, consider it one of the high points of the book. This chapter not only covers some basic elements of trap design (expanding vastly on the guidelines provided in the DMG), it also discusses the different ways that traps can be implemented during the course of an adventure. This chapter is also very useful if you’ve ever wondered exactly what it means to “detect” a trap; let alone “disable” it.

Way of the Rogue: And now, kicking sand in the face of Logic, I close my summary with a discussion of the first chapter in the book. This chapter opens with a discussion of trap lore (which is also a valuable resource when it comes to describing the detection and disabling of traps), moves onto the “business of thievery” (guilds, extortion, smuggling, and a half dozen other types of rackets), tosses out a handful of prestige classes (Discreet Companion, Guildmaster, Roofrunner, and Trapmaster), a new NPC class (Thug), new skills, new feats, new equipment, and more.

This chapter is something of a catch-all at times, providing some of the raw tools necessary for the traps which follow it: A couple new arcane spells; several new divine spells; a thievery domain for clerics; etc.

For me, the highlight here (in terms of crunchy stuff) are the new skills, feats, and equipment. The rules for making and using poisons, along with new poisons, are also very valuable.

GOOD STUFF

All the good stuff about Traps & Treachery can be summed up very simply: Information. Lots and lots of information. Accompanied by lots and lots of crunchy stuff just waiting to be dropped into your campaign.

If you’re a DM with any predilection towards spicing scenarios with fiendish traps, then Traps & Treachery definitely deserves a place on your reference shelf. Nor should you be fooled into thinking this book worthless if you don’t run dungeon crawls: The very first use I put this book to was swapping out a trap in Terror in Freeport that I felt was far too absurd. (The concrete mixer became Blackstone’s Killer Kennel.)

If you’re the player of a rogue, then you’ll definitely want to take a peek at all the material in the front of the book (but keep out of the back, you snoop!).

In short, it doesn’t matter who you are: You’re going to find useful material in this book.

One thing I touched on briefly, above, but want to mention again, is the attention to detail. For example, every single trap in the book not only describes the effects it has, but also goes into detail on what it means to detect and disable the trap. This is the type of thing which is invaluable to me as a DM, because it saves me a ton of work.

BAD STUFF

I would have liked to see a narrower focus for Traps & Treachery: I would have preferred to see 172 pages of traps or 172 pages of thief-oriented information. Not half-and-half.

The reason for this is simple: As a DM I would want the traps. As a player I would want the class-oriented information. There’s very little crossover there. And, to make matters worse, as a DM I don’t want my players looking at the trap information.

The other thing you should consider is your tolerance for elaborately engineered and/or over-the-top traps. I, personally, have a very low tolerance for that type of thing – so I will not be using the trap which turns the victim into a mouse and releases house cats to eat them. Or the treadmill which feeds you into a spinning blades. Or the corridor which shoots buzzsaws at you. For me, such things are atmosphere killers and deflators of suspension of disbelief. (This is the same reason why you will never see a tinker gnome in my campaigns. Ever.)

On the flipside, the frequency of these types of traps is rare in T&T. And, in fact, if you – like I – thought Grimtooth’s trap books were great ideas but threw up your hands in disgust at how absolutely ludicrous and ridiculous the content was, then Traps & Treachery is like a dream come true.

CONCLUSION

If the first time you read through a supplement like Traps & Treachery you are constantly stopping to jot down notes of different ways in which you want to use the material, then the book is a success. If the book then earns a place in your gaming bag (so that it comes along with you to every gaming session) because you’re using the material in it in every single game session, then the book is something really special.

Traps & Treachery sits right next to my PHB, DMG, and MM every single time I sit down to the gaming table.

‘Nuff said.

Note: The reviewer has worked on a number of projects for Fantasy Flight Games, including five adventure modules and Mythic Races. The reviewer did not work on Traps & Treachery.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Greg Benage, Kurt Brown, Mark Chance, Brian Ferrenz, Lizard, David Lyons, Brian Patterson
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Line: D20
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 158994020-2
Product Code: DD17
Pages: 172

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

This supplement can’t quite focus itself: As a sourcebook it tries to cover too much. As an adventure it doesn’t cover enough.

Originally Published March 14th, 2002

Slavers was published in 2000 as part of the effort by Wizards of the Coast to revive the Greyhawk line. As a supplement for the second edition of AD&D, it would require conversion before it could be used in a D&D3 campaign. This review assumes that this conversion is going to take place: In other words, the question “Is this worth taking the time to convert?” is going to be part of the final judgment of the product.

CONTENTS

Slavers bills itself as a sequel to the “Slavelords saga”. For those of you unfamiliar with AD&D history, the Slavelords saga encompasses the first edition A1-4 modules (A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity, A2: Secret of the Slavers Stockade, A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, and A4: In the Dungeon of the Slave Lords).

This is, in my opinion, the first mistake that Slavers makes. When Slavers came out, the original modules had not been available for more than a decade. Yet Slavers relies heavily on the DM’s knowledge of the previous adventures, and even (at some points) seems to assume that the players will at least have a passing knowledge of the importance of past events. (Slavers was not the only product in the renewed Greyhawk line which suffered from this problem. Return of the Eight, which I reviewed here, referenced products which had been out of date for nearly three decades.)

The second mistake Slavers makes is billing itself as a sequel, when it’s really more of a sourcebook. Of course, as a sourcebook it also seems confused as to its identity: The sourcebook seems to go wherever the sparsely plotted adventure takes it. So it’s sort of a sourcebook about the Pomarj; and kind of about Nyr Dyv; and somewhat about the lands of the Flanaess (but not all of them).

We’ll come back to that.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for Slavers. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

The problem with the plot can basically be summed up with this quote from the book: “However, these sites and people have only vague links that tie them together into a grand adventure.”

“Vague links” and “grand adventure” do not really belong in the same sentence together.

Here, however, is roughly how the plot is constructed: The PCs are based out of the city of Dyvers. Slavers begin operating in the area, and players eventually hear rumors of slavers operating out of the Blackthorn Caverns. The outline tells us that: “Care should be taken so that the heroes don’t discover the precise location of the entrance to Blackthorn’s Caverns.” This prevents the heroes from doing logical things (like informing the authorities of the slaver’s stronghold). The outline also gives us several ideas about how to go about doing this… none of which actually work. The PCs are also supposed to lose at Blackthorn; and lose badly.

When the PCs return to Dyvers in defeat, they will witness the end of a slave raid by the Pirates of the Yellow Veil. “They can only stop a few of the raiders, and are too late to prevent the ship from setting sail and escaping.” (That’s great: Not only is the adventure vague, it’s railroaded.) Of course, the PCs’ friends are among those kidnapped by the Slavers.

And off they go: To the secret base in Nyr Dyv. To the Slavers’ Cove. To the slaver ship Eternal Sun. To more slaver bases. To more slaver bases. And still more slaver bases. And a few more slaver bases. And, eventually, the Big Slaver Base.

What the adventure lacks in epic structure, it makes worse through lack of imagination. The scenarios quickly boil down to a series of very short, very boring, practically identical raids. There is no sense of the epic here, and very few original ideas. Simply put, Slavers lacks greatness: The PCs never go anywhere with more than two dozen encounter keys (and most have a half dozen or less). An epic requires scope, and Slavers never finds it.

SOURCEBOOK

As a sourcebook, Slavers provides background material for Dyvers, North Woolly Bay, the Orcish Wild Coast, and the Pomarj.

The first problem here, as noted above, is that there doesn’t seem to be any particular rhyme or reason why these particular locations are covered in a sourcebook together: Other than the fact that the accompanying adventure outline supposedly carries the PCs through these locales.

This begins to create a cascading problem: The book appears to be more interested in being a sourcebook than an adventure, and the adventure suffers as a result – becoming little more than a rough outline of ideas. But as a sourcebook, it’s only definite use is in supplementing the adventure it’s busily undermining by trying to be a sourcebook.

The problem is made worse by the fact that the adventure (which, remember, is rendered into little more than an outline) warps the presentation of the sourcebook material. For example, in the section on Nyr Dyv you don’t get comprehensive coverage of Nyr Dyv – you get paltry coverage of Nyr Dyv, with some focused detail on a handful of locations which are only important for the adventure.

Once again, this creates a cascading problem: You don’t have enough of a general focus to provide a good general-purpose sourcebook. At the same time, you don’t have enough of a specific focus to provide a good sourcebook for the adventure.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, Slavers can’t quite focus itself: As a sourcebook it tries to cover too much, too randomly. As an adventure it doesn’t cover enough.

As a result, I really can’t recommend this one to anybody who isn’t a compulsive collector of Greyhawk material. Fans of the original Slavers adventures might enjoy this book more than others; but, by the same token, there’s also a good chance that they’ll hate its flaws even more.

One mitigating note, however: Those willing to dig a bit will find a lot of juicy material here that can be pried out and used in other places. I, for example, used material from Slavers to help flush out and fill in the weaknesses I perceive in the original Slavers modules: Essentially combining the strengths of both the original and sequel, while excising the combined weaknesses, to give the raw material for a single epic adventure track.

Style: 4
Substance: 3

Author: Sean K. Reynolds and Chris Pramas
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 0-7869-1621-4
Product Code: TSR11621
Pages: 128

Around this time I was planning to run the Slavelords saga as a follow-up to the Freeport Trilogy. I wanted to expand the original tourney modules into a node-based campaign (although I wasn’t referring to it as node-based design yet) and I’d picked up Slavers in the hopes that I could use it to flesh out the original material. This, as you can see from the review, didn’t really pan out. I eventually just dumped the original A-series modules entirely and started designing my own Slave Lords campaign from scratch. Unfortunately, that group fell apart after running through the first couple slaver adventures and I ended up never finishing the campaign.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

A very crunchy, very useful supplement for D20. Like, Minions, Arms & Armor suffers from a price tag just a little too high for its content.

Review Originally Published March 13th, 2002

CONTENT

Arms & Armor is Bastion Press’ second D20 supplement. Like Minions, Bastion’s first offering, Arms & Armor is a 96-page soft-cover book featuring full-color printing on glossy pages. As the title would suggest, it focuses on weapons and armor: Simple, martial, exotic, magical, and more. There is also a short section on martial constructs: Golems and other constructs which are, essentially, forms of weapon and armor which “wield themselves” in one way or another.

GOOD STUFF

Arms & Armor is very, very crunchy, delivering exactly what it promises.

Weapons: Somewhere in the ballpark of 125 new weapons are introduced here – ranging from the mundane (claymore) to the unusual (combat hook) to the foreign (cicada wing sword) to the practical (brass knuckles) to the exotic (double-bladed sword). Combine that with roughly 70 new properties for magical weapons (my favorites are alterable weapons and pivoting arrows), roughly 50 new magical weapons (including class weapons and artifacts – my favorites are the silent dagger, which projects a 5-ft. field of silence around itself, and the arrow of seeing, which allows the user to see everything around the location where the arrow lands), and new rules and options for intelligent weapons.

Armor: Roughly 60 new types of armor are described here, approximately 70 new magical armor qualities, along with new extras and accessories for armor. Several dozen suits of magical armor are discussed, including class-based armor. Optional rules for armor (including the first published 3E system for armor as damage reduction) are also given. My favorites in this section include bone mail (chain mail made from bone), daggered plate (with daggers concealed as armor decoration), quick don armor (which cuts down the amount of time necessary to don the armor), phoenix armor (which will resurrect a character who dies in the armor once, destroying the armor in the process), and healing armor (which can be used to heal the character wearing it).

Other Stuff: Arms & Armor also includes rules for cleric domain rods, arcane school staves, racial masks, and martial constructs. The domain rods, school staves, and racial masks are all very useful. Martial constructs include amulet servitors (golems which collapse into small amulets of tightly wound metal when not in use), golem armor (your armor is alive), and the silver steeds (magical mounts). Several types of new material for weapon and armor construction are also covered.

Arms & Armor also manages to largely avoid a common pitfall of products like this: Weapons and armor so incredibly goofy that they make you want to burst out laughing. There are still some things which will likely make you wince (particularly if you value a high degree of realism in the non-magical weapons of your world), but nothing incredibly bizarre. And even if you really dislike the bizarre and exotic weapons of 3rd Edition, there’s more than enough here that you’ll happily be able to incorporate into your campaign.

BAD STUFF

I don’t like Todd Morasch’s artwork. I commented on this in my review of Minions, as well (Morasch serves as Lead Artist and Art Director on both books): It’s not that he does bad work. But he doesn’t do exceptional work, either. The term “mediocre” fits his work perfectly, I’m afraid.

Of course, that’s just my opinion: Feel free to glance through the book and form your own opinion. However, his work in Arms & Armor is objectively flawed insofar as his artwork just plain fails to match the text. For example, on the very first page of weapon descriptions he manages to draw the chained axe (described as “a double-bladed axe-head attached to a haft by a length of chain”) without a haft. His illustration of the basket-hilted broadsword, described on the same page, not only fails to possess a basket hilt, but appears to possess a double-blade for some unfathomable reason. And so forth.

It’s also regrettable that, despite space on the page, the decision was made to not illustrate all of the weapons described in the book. Almost all of the armor is also devoid of illustration.

In terms of design, I haven’t spotted anything horribly unbalancing after reading the book through and playtesting as many of the items as possible. There are, however, a couple of designs which will leave you scratching your head. For example, the axe-hammer is described like this:

An exotic weapon, the axe-hammer is a long hafted weapon with an axe blade on one side of the head and a blunt hammer on the other. Due to the strange balance of the weapon, axe or hammer wielders cannot use it proficiently; special training is required.

Which is all well and good. But the axe-hammer is statted up as a double weapon. Which doesn’t make sense. If there was an axe head on one end of the haft and a hammer head on the other, sure – that’s a double weapon. But as it stands, an axe-hammer should no more be a double weapon than a greataxe.

CONCLUSION

The only reservation I have in recommending Arms & Armor is the same reservation I had for Minions: The price. At $20 this would be a book which I would happily hype as perfect for every DM’s game shelf. At $24.95, however, I get a little bit choosier about 96 page sourcebooks.

My own mileage:

At the moment I am working on redesigning and repopulating the lower levels of Khundrukar (a dwarven city which serves as the setting for WotC’s Forge of Fury Adventure Path module). As a result, I’m looking for all sorts of nifty and unusual weapons to strew around the dungeon as treasure and/or set dressing. Thus, Arms & Armor is absolutely perfect.

So if you have a niche like this in your game you’re trying to fill, then Arms & Armor is going to fill it very well.

On the other hand, if you don’t have such a niche for the book (if it’s something you’d only dip into sparingly once or twice over the next few years, rather than seeing constant usage), then Arms & Armor will probably prove a little too pricey for you.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Greg Dent (Lead Designer)
Publisher: Bastion Press, Inc.
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 0-9714392-2-2
Product Code: BAS1001
Pages: 96

Bastion Press’ D20 System supplements were mechanically sloppy and often ugly, but as a GM I got an incredible amount of value out of them. They were often the first thing I would reach for when looking to add either depth or a touch of the exotic to an adventure. I believe this is the last of their books that I wrote a review for, but their entire product line still sits on my gaming shelf.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Review Originally Published March 13th, 2002

Most of the buzz around Mystic Eye Games which has come my way has focused on their Nightmares & books or the The Hunt: Rise of Evil campaign setting. Not very much attention, it seems, has turned to their modules – such as The Pit of Loch-Durnan, an adventure for characters of 2nd to 4th level.

And maybe there’s a good reason for: The Pit of Loch-Durnan has a lot of problems. But we’ll come back to that. First, let’s take a quick peek at the plot.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Pit of Loch-Durnan. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

At first glance, The Pit of Loch-Durnan appears to be a pretty straight forward, clichéd fantasy adventure: The PCs are approached by two villagers, who tell them that the village mine has been infested by goblins. “Won’t you please come save us?” they beg. The PCs come to the village, clean out the mine, and there is much rejoicing.

But things are a little more complicated than that: In point of fact, the village mine is not just infested with goblins. It is also infested with a very powerful, imprisoned demon who is attempting to escape. The demon has enslaved the entire population of the village and the PCs are actually falling victim to an elaborate trap designed to bring them under the demon’s control.

Abandoned in the titular pit (the village’s mine), the PCs must fight their way past undead minions, defeat goblin slaves, destroy the demon’s crystal, escape into the mansion of the twin brothers responsible for freeing the demon, defeat the brothers, and free the village.

Fun stuff.

BAD STUFF

Those who have followed my reviews over the years know that they tend to follow a common pattern: A synopsis of the content, a review of the good stuff, a review of the bad stuff, and then a conclusion.

In this case, however, I’m going to break from tradition by discussing the bad stuff first. Because there’s a lot of it.

The biggest and most glaring problem is apparent the instant you open this book up: The layout is atrocious. The illustrations are god-awful. The entire product reeks of amateurism from one end to the other. Radically different fonts are rammed up against each other; bold, italic, and underline text is rampantly overused; paragraph spacing is inconsistent at best, illegible at worst; and on and on and on. The only point of solace in the entire sorry mess is the front cover: If the entire product has been as good as the cover illustration there would have been spontaneous dancing in the streets when this module was released. (I may be exaggerating slightly there.)

I playtested this module. Before I playtested it, though, I sat down and revised it. Extensively.

Now, generally, I’m pretty leery of reviews that talk about how the reviewer would have written a product (rather than actually dealing with the actual product). In this case, though, I think it’s the easiest way to demonstrate everything that’s wrong with The Pit of Loch-Durnan:

1. First off, I stripped out all the silly and oddly jarring names which have been given to the NPCs in this module. Gormon? Warphit? Sheepo the Goblin? Tippi the Ghoul? On the plus side, they’re pronounceable (unlike so many bad fantasy names). On the down side, I felt like I had been teleported into some sort of bizarre Sesame Street of Horrors.

2. I provided a logical reason for why the demon in the Pit would want to bring adventurers to the town. (The more powerful the people it enslaves, the more powerful it can become. Therefore, it wants people as powerful as possible – but not so powerful it thinks it can’t defeat them.) I also provided an explanation for enslaving the PCs that involves dumping them in a pit and giving them a mission to kill the goblins… who are also slaves of the demon.

3. I pumped up the elements of betrayal in the townsfolk. This is a nice theme (as I discussed above), but if you run the adventure as written the PCs will literally never, ever know that the whole mission is a sham until after they’ve destroyed the demon. As a result, there is no mystery or build to the adventure: Just a yawn-fest of a dungeon crawl cliché, followed by an incomprehensible attack by the townsfolk. I honestly don’t understand why Doug Herring and Andrew Thompson tossed aside one of the best elements of the adventure.

4. I did this by having the PCs get fed a sleeping poison during the night. There was always the chance that they wouldn’t be affected by the poison (in which case they would be lowered into the pit normally, but would not be raised back up again) – but if they were affected by the poison, the villagers would strip them of all their possessions before dumping them into the pit. This added a survival element to the module, which also helped strengthen the “kill all the goblins plot”.

5. Barlan’s back story was given a degree of credibility and self-consistency. In the module as written there is absolutely no explanation of how Barlan knows any of the information he gives to the PCs.

6. The goblins are given a reason for being in the Pit. For some reason, the authors neglect to explain why the goblins are there; how they got there; etc. There is some sense that they have also been enslaved by the demon, just like the townsfolk, but its not clear how that happened, why, or what purpose they serve in the dungeon.

7. The reaction tables needed some tidying up to make them practical/useful for the final confrontation with the demon crystal. The module also neglects to take into consideration what the villagers are going to do at the end of the scenario.

Those are the major highlights. Basically, the common theme here is simple: There’s a lot of raw material here, but it’s like unmolded clay… you’re going to have to work it if you expect to have anything resembling a sculpture at the end of the day.

GOOD STUFF

The good stuff here is the raw material itself:

1. The maps. The pit itself is well thought out, with some strong encounters. I would’ve liked to see the goblins be a little more proactive, but I have yet to see a module take the simple step of providing a comprehensive analysis of how an actual colony of intelligent humanoids would react to an assault by an adventuring party.

2. The basic concept. Villagers hiring PCs to save the village, only to have it revealed that the whole scenario (the most basic cliché of adventure gaming) is an elaborate trap designed to enslave the PCs to the will of a demon. It’s necessary to seriously beat the adventure into shape in order to bring this out, but it’s there.

3. The characters. There are some really strong NPCs here – both antagonists and victims. There is a scene towards the end of the module that’s a classic: The PCs have rescued a family of villagers who were taken prisoner after they proved resistant to the demon crystal. Their five year old son was tortured to death before their eyes. As the PCs work their way through the mansion, their son suddenly appears! …a decayed and rotting zombie. The PCs need to physically restrain the father from going to his son’s corpse (which will tear out his throat if given half a chance).

The Pit of Loch-Durnan needs a lot of spit and polish… and patching… and reconstructive surgery. But it’s worth it if you’re willing to put the work into it.

CONCLUSION

The Pit of Loch-Durnan has a lot of problem. A lot of problems. But it’s salvageable. And there’s enough material to chew on here that, if you’re willing to put a little elbow grease into it, this can be a highly entertaining module for you and your group.

That being said: There are definitely better D20 modules on the market right now. Personally, I’m happy with The Pit of Loch-Durnan in large part because it slotted very nicely into one of the D&D campaigns I’m currently running. Despite the massive amount of revision I needed to do, I felt I got a decent bang for my buck.

Could Mystic Eye Games have done better? Oh, God, yes. By the same token, however, there’s enough of merit here that I really hope that Mystic Eye Games does do better in the future – because it would be a shame to see the value of some of the raw material I see here go to waste.

Style: 2
Substance: 2

Authors: Doug Herring, Andrew Thompson
Company: Mystic Eye Games
Price: $11.95
ISBN: 0-9708265-1-6
Production Code: MYG0002
Pages: 72

Revisiting this review, I’m forced to conclude that my effort to explain the adventure’s many, many failures by explaining everything I changed in trying to fix them doesn’t seem to work. Feels like you need to have already read the adventure for my laundry list to mean anything.

What I remember about The Pit of Loch-Durnan is that it’s quite likely the worst published adventure I’ve ever run. The conflict is that — after writing up 35 pages of revisions to fix the thing — we had a really fantastic time playing the adventure at the table. The deconstruction of the standard dungeon is such a cool concept that, if you pull it off (in exactly the way the published adventure doesn’t), you’ll get a really memorable experience.

Oddly, the bit about the really great looking cover causing “dancing in the streets” was sort of prophetic: The first wave of reviews absolutely raved about this adventure. It was even nominated for the Best Adventure ENnie Award in 2001 (the first  year of the Ennies) — a decision which made it rather difficult for me to take the Ennies seriously for many years. This was really quite inexplicable, and later reviews (my own among them) have generally been more accurate in their assessment.

My review was also a huge “scandal” when it came out. A number of different free RPG review sites had popped up in the wake of RPGNet, and I decided to start cross-posting my reviews at multiple sites. This include ENWorld and a defunct site called d20reviews.com. The “problem” was that these different sites used different rubrics. I forget the details at this point, but whereas RPGNet used Style & Substance, for example, you might have another site using X out of 5 Stars and another that included scores for Playability, Mechanics, and Graphics, or whatever. In cross-posting the review, I would also rate it according to the local rubric. This caused consternation because if I gave it 2/5 + 2/5 at RPGNet, then why had I given it 1 out of 5 stars somewhere else? The argument was that this should be a simple mathematical conversion. My position was (and remains) that if you’re scoring for different things, you should not expect those scores to equal each other across multiple criteria.

What was really driving the “scandal” was that Mystic Eye Games was furious that I had attempted to “tank” their review scores. They started by contacting me privately and demanding that I remove the reviews, otherwise they wouldn’t send me review copies in the future. When I refused, they went public with the “math” to claim that I was biased. They were successful in creating a kerfluffle and making me waste a bunch of time responding to a lot of nonsense. (Wouldn’t be the last time.)

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

A great third-party Monster Manual for D20. Minions is a little pricy for its content, but the quality is high. Recommended.

Review Originally Published March 13th, 2002

CONTENT

Minions: The Fearsome Foes is a third-party monster manual from Bastion Press. It’s a softcover featuring full-color printing on glossy pages, and weighs in at 96 pages. It’s not entirely clear why the product is named Minions: There doesn’t seem to be any particular theme to the monsters found here. (In fact, the Puppetmaster is described as the “ultimate voice of evil in the multiverse” with the possible exception of “the deities themselves”… which would be the exact opposite of a minion in my book.)

GOOD STUFF

But whether the book is called Minions or Grandpa Fred’s Cookbook, it’s the content that matters, and that’s where Minions delivers: 92 monsters, including templates, are squeezed between the covers – and most of them are good. Very good. A few samples:

Amberjuron. An enigma of the forest. The amberjuron is indistinguishable from a snowy owl, save for the gleam of intelligence in its eye. Amberjurons live for a thousand years, and their insatiable curiousity and fascination leads them to acquire a wide range of rare knowledge and magic. They can serve as sources of information and rare items, but only if the PCs know how to approach them diplomatically.

Am-Ren. An am-ren is a demon which steals the names of its victims. Those who have their names stolen literally lose their identity.

Blessed Ring. A blessed ring is similar to the fairy rings of folklore: Simple rings of common toadstools found in the wilderness. With a twist: Those who lie within a blessed ring for five rounds will find themselves surrounded by an impenetrable dome. Those who are pure of heart may rest within the blessed ring for as long as they want, protected from threat by the powerful acidic attacks of the ring. Those who are evil, however, will be digested by the blessed ring.

Cacogen. Stealthy undead, crafted from the remains of lepers, hunchbacks, or other deformed humans. They are essentially undead assassins.

Ebant. A well-executed dark treant.

Hearth Horror. Why is the evil temple in the middle of the wilderness always being rebuilt? Possibly because the ruins have spawned a hearth horror: A powerful undead which compels its mortal servants into restoring its original form.

Mirror Fiend. A powerful golem which lives within (and can emerge from) a mirror. When it returns to its mirror it can regenerate from its wounds; but it can also be destroyed by destroying its mirror.

Quickener. A powerful CR 20 creature which absorbs every spell cast at it – enabling it to cast the same spells at its targets. Unpredictable, quick, and deadly, high-level characters will need to exercise their minds as well as their brawn if they expect to defeat a quickener.

Slather. A huge magical beast which disguises itself as the entrances to buildings, dungeons, etc. – swallowing any who pass through its “doors”.

Sync. I really like this race of humanoids. Syncs have featureless faces, but when they enter combat they slowly assume the features of their chosen target. As they do so they become more adept at adapting to their target’s tactics – they become faster, stronger, quicker. PCs who don’t destroy a sync quickly will rapidly find themselves completely outclassed. There is a quality of the doppleganger here, but the concept is very original and can serve to totally panic your PCs.

In general, Minions succeeds at giving you a wide range of high quality monsters. This isn’t just another rehash of concepts you’ve seen a thousand times before: There are some truly fresh, original ideas which will send you scrabbling to take notes for your next game session.

One particularly nice touch in Minions is the inclusion of a “Campaign” section with each monster entry. This entry gives you adventure seeds, campaign ideas, and other notes for incorporating the monster into your game in an effective, compelling fashion.

CRITIQUES

I think the first strike Minions has against it is the title: When I saw the book on the shelf of my local game store I assumed it was a generic NPC collection and passed it over with little more than a quick glance. This is compounded by the cover design, which seems to be place where Bastion Press has been consistently weak to date (although the forthcoming Oathbound looks like its going to completely reverse this trend).

In short, you’re likely to overlook or underestimate Minions at first glance. Don’t. This is a great product, which suffers from only a couple of flaws:

First, some of the creatures in Minions have been given rather cheesy names. For example, the cavernivore. What? Does it eat caverns? The cavernivore is actually a solid creature (just in need of a name change), but there are a couple of others that just left me scratching my head: The chortler, for example, is a hyena-like creature that attacks with a deadly cloud of dandruff.

That’s right. Dandruff.

Minions also features a few too many humanoids for my tastes. This is just my personal taste, though: There’s only so many “they’re just like goblins, but they have the head of a dog!” that I can squeeze into a campaign world before I begin feeling a little ridiculous. And even with my strong tastes in this matter, this is still little more than a quibble for me.

I would have also liked to see stronger art in Minions. I like being able to hold up a book like this, point to a picture, and say: “This is what you see.” There are less than a half dozen pictures in Minions that I would actually do that with. I do appreciate that every monster (with the exception of one) has a picture associated with it. And the illustrations do not actively detract from the book – they simply don’t add much to it.

CONCLUSION

The only reservation I have in recommending Minions is the price: $24.95 is a hard pill for me to swallow for a 96 page soft cover, even in full color. If this book was priced at $20, I wouldn’t hesitate to push you out the door on the way to the game store. At it is, you should give it a good solid ponder to make sure you have a good use for it before you pick it up. Things would probably be slightly different if the artwork were of a higher quality (which would help justify the full-color).

Nonetheless:

Minions gets the job done. There are a lot of really clever, compelling ideas here: Monsters that make you sit up and want to use them in a game. Monsters that will add freshness and variety to your campaign. Monsters that will send shivers of terror down the spines of your players (and their characters).

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Greg Dent (Lead Designer)
Publisher: Bastion Press, Inc.
Line: D20
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 0-9714392-1-4
Product Code: BAS1000
Pages: 96

I got quite a bit of use out of Minions for a couple of years after writing this review, but then I took a short break from D&D and it fell out of the rotation.

A good monster manual, in my opinion, is one that you end up using at least a couple dozen monsters from. A great monster manual, on the other hand, is one that inspires you to create whole adventures. By that metric, Minions veers closer to greatness than not. Unfortunately for most people reading this, it’s never received an update for D&D 5E. (Fortunately for me, I still run D&D 3E campaigns.)

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.