1 comments about Call of Cthulhu Gamemasters Pack (Call of Cthulhu Horror Roleplaying, 8801).

1. Since the amazon.com description doesn't give too many details, here's what you get with the d20 Call of Cthulhu Gamemaster's Pack: A tri-fold GM screen, four handy bookmarks, a booklet of official-looking forms, and a largeish booklet that comprises the Gamemaster Pack proper.

   The screen is complete and stands up well, but is slightly smaller than most screens I've worked with. The side facing the players features the incredibly cool artwork for Chaosiums current edition of the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Unfortunatley, the screen doesn't have the game's skill list, so you'll need another method to keep track of which skills can be used untrained and other skill details. Other than that oversight, the screen is so handy that I hardly have to consult the rules book while playing.

   The bookmarks are nice and functional. Each is customized for a different section of the rules and features a mini-index of relevent information. Between these and the information on the screen, finding information during a game session is not a problem.

   The book of forms is rather useless to me. While it is nice to have official looking forms (dental records, asylum records, etc.) as play aids during a game, these are all customized for an Arkham setting - little use in my Chicago-based games!

   The main Gamemaster Pack book is largely comprised of a nice adventure, "The Lost Temple of Yig". The 30 page strikes a good balance between adventure and exploration. Game stats are given for both the d20 and the original version of the RPG. Further background for "The Lost Temple of Yig" or your campaign is given about its Vanguard Club. The official errata follows, which isn't as bad as you'd think - it just seems that some of the authors of the original book didn't communicate too well as most of the errors are internal inconsistancies. A conversion system for using original Call of Cthulhu material with the new d20 version is pretty straightforward - you determine the level of the character you're converting and buy skills and feats from there. Next up are the record sheets, which along with the GM screen, are the shining stars of the pack. There is a redesigned two-page character sheet (with an old-school insanity track), minor character sheets, and monster master and minion sheets. The graphic design of these sheets (and the whole package) is outstanding.

   Overall, while I would've preferred paying a little less for just the screen, bookmarks, and sheets alone (errata should always be free!), the adventure and background information is good enough that [this]is a bargain for the whole package. More than a screen, this is a pack to make any d20 Call of Cthulhu Gamemaster's job easier.

No comments about The Quintessential Druid (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying).

2 comments about *OP Demon Players Guide (Demon).

1. I like his players guide just as I like all White Wolf products. The Players Guide puts out a lot of good information and gives a beter understanding of te "how" and more importantly the "why" of the game. If your into the White Wol universe ad are going to use "The Fallen" as antagoist (I love them for my HUNTER seesions, my players are puzzled as they haven't goten online with Demon yet) get this book!



2. This book is a must have for any fan of Demon the Fallen. Rules for designing apocalyptic forms are fully written out as are the purpose that each of the apocalyptic forms played in creation. There are many other highly usefull things in this book...but I won't list them all. This book is very helpful for anyone who needs help, or wants rules for truely customizing their character. This book also has suprisingly few typos for a White Wolf book.

2 comments about The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game: Guide to the X-Men.

1. Good supplement to the marvel universe rpg. It adds a fair number of new powers as well as some good villains and heroes from the marvel x-teams. The mini-adventure in the back is top notch and will help inexperienced game masters and players ease into the gaming system. Not a must have, but definitely a nice addition for the marvel gamer.



2. It give you the info that you need for them and lets you get a feel for them.

No comments about Gamma World: Out of the Vaults (Gamma World d20 3.5 Roleplaying).

1 comments about Volo's Guide to the Dalelands (AD&D/Forgotten Realms).

1. Ed Greenwood does it again! Volo's Guide to the Dalelands is a book that you don't want to do without if you're a DM that is fond of the Dalelands region of the Forgotten Realms. It's got the always enjoyable style of Volo, with comments (and of course, witty remarks!) thrown in from Elminster.

   Besides all that, it's full of little tidbits of information that you, as the DM, can work with to make stories jump out just from a whisper of a hint of an idea.

   And, as always, the listings and descriptions of various inns, taverns, shops, etc. are invaluable to giving your players a feel for the game.

5 comments about Douglas Adams Starship Titanic: The Official Strategy Guide.

1. In the genre of PC Game Strategy Guides, it may be difficult or impossible to consider the book without reference to the game. That said, Neil Richards' "Starship Titanic: the Official Strategy Guide" is an essential, albeit well-padded, guide to an underwhelming gaming experience.

   The guide begins with forty pages of fluff, mostly unhelpful, unfunny introductions to the main, animate characters in the game: the "bots" - well-meaning, malfunctioning, robotic crew of the Starship.

   This is followed by sixty-some pages of what the author curiously calls "hints". In the best of worlds, a player, frustrated by the mind-numbing pedantry of the game itself, would expect this section of the guide to offer subtle suggestions on clues that may have been overlooked. In fact, it consists of verbose solutions to the trite, often silly, puzzles aboard the Starship Titanic. Unlike Myst or Riven, Starship Titanic requires little more "strategy" than hit-or-miss bumbling about and rudimentary linking of tasks, so perhaps these type of "hints" are appropriate to the situation.

   The next section, titled "Solutions", is merely a repeat of the previous section, minus the blather. It lists the step-by-step procedures for obtaining and assembling each of the pieces of the puzzle. Don't be tempted to use this section to speed up the boring part of the game to get to the "good stuff", or you'll quickly find yourself at the end of the game with nothing to look forward to except -- perish the thought!! -- a sequel.




2. This guide to the adventure game "Starship Titanic" wants to do three things at once. First, it gives more background to the Starship and the characters in the game. Second, there are stories from behind the scenes, telling how the game came to be. Interesting stuff, but unfortunately all this leave too little room for what I consider the most important part: The hint section.

   The cover promises "subtle hints" and "complete solutions". This made me expect gradually more obvious hints for each problem, each hint on a separate line to avoid reading too far. In the book, each overall problem has its own section, but the section itself is one long description of how to solve the problem. This makes it VERY easy to read too far. I recommend reading the hint section one line at a time, with the rest of the page covered by a piece of paper. The hints are in themselves good enough, but not always subtle enough. And the prose flows TOO WELL: You read on where you should pause and return to the game! At least the most outright spoilers are kept in a separate section of the book.

   I enjoyed reading about Douglas Adams' visions of the game and I found the sections on the creation of the game very interesting. If this guide had been sold as a hint book but as background material I would have rated it 4 stars (but to tell the truth, I would probably not have bought it in the first place for just that - I am a Douglas Adams fan, but there are limits).

   All in all: The book contains quite a bit of interesting material, but personally I would have preferred a plain hint book of better quality.




3. When I bought Starship Titanic Gold Edition I got the Starship Titanic Stragety Guide Included. When I browsed through it I noticed the book had interesting subjects from the Starship Titanic game the problem is that it has an anoying part where you can accidently open to a spolier or too good a hint. Even though I loved it! It was an excellent book. I like it because it has 3 main sections: I)Blerontin Bugle, II)Hints and III)Solutions. It also has some lesser important sections called:1)Table Of Contents, 2)The PET and 3)Index. It also has a page that gives the website address. I'll give you one hint read the book!



4. I loved the book that's why I gave it the maximum rating. I think it's the best book (sorry strategy guide) ever! Thank God they're making a sequle to Starship Titanic! (I got the info about a sequle at the Starship Titanic website.)

   The book has a few sections which are: A) Table Of Contents, B) The Blerontin Bugle, C) Meet The Bots, D) The PET, E) Hints, F) Solutions, G) Index, and finally H) website information (well actually it's some "thing" about the website.) I also like the front cover. It's pretty.

   In the middle of the Hints section of the book (well not in the middle they're spread out over the section) are some articles and footnotes on the making of Starship Titanic (the footnotes are just little notes ont the interior spaces and the areas ot the Titanic.) The Blerinton Bugle section of the book gives some good back story clues. Meet the Bots is funny but they left two bots out they are Rowbot (the gondaliers) and Boppy Headcase the pianist in the music room [he is the one who bangs his head}.) ThePET section is annoyingly stupid. Hints is a little too spefic. And Soultions is too step-by-step informative.

   All and all I loved the book because the Solutions aren't stupid "try this" and "try that" kind of solutions they're "do this" and "do that" solutions. I think the book is superb and I say: "Bravo Doug you've done it!"




5. If you have "Starship Titanic", Douglas Adams last CD-ROM game, this book will get you through it, plus there's some sly Adams wit sprinkled throughout.

4 comments about GURPS Infinite Worlds (GURPS 4th Edition Roleplaying).

1. But the scale only goes up to 5 stars!
   
   I bought this book because it is advertised as the new "official" setting for GURPS fourth edition. The first thing I need to do is dispel that myth. This book contains that information but it contains so much more that you have troubles believing that the authors managed to cram so much information between the two covers without it exploding.
   
   This isn't really a "background" book that describes a single well thought out campaign, it is more of a "background generator" book that provides the basis of literally thousands of possible campaigns. The scope of this book is so gigantic that I have troubles believing that the authors managed to finish this project anywhere near on time.
   
   Want cross-time adventuring? It's in there. Want alternate histories? Boy is it EVER in there! Want Time Travel adventures? Yep, it's there too. Don't want to have to worry about blowing up the space-time continuum? There's suggestions on how to suspend disbelief without damaging gameplay.
   
   Say you want to create your own alternate history but don't want to deal with all the icky stuff of guns vs. swords. There's a very detailed chapter that assists you in filling out your vision before your players go mucking around and spoil things by emphasizing the one thing you didn't think of.
   
   My head was spinning by the time I was 90% of the way through the book. There was too much to grasp. The scale of the author's efforts had caused my brain to go into meltdown and I couldn't figure out whether I wanted to:
   1) Run screaming from the room (did I mention that there's lots of Cthulu-oriented stuff in here as well?)
   2) Ignore the book for a year or so until I could clear my head enough to think logically
   3) Introduce my players to a tiny spoonful of this fascinating universe (my head ached from the thought of even trying to work out all of the causality-related issues)
   
   Then I hit Chapter 7 (Infinite Campaigns) and the authors addressed all of my concerns and self-doubts in a few clever paragraphs. They pointed out that the big thing that the GM needs to do first is figure out what he and the players want to do. This needs to be in alignment or the game won't work (trying to force a locked-room Agatha Christie mystery down the throats of a bunch of combat-oriented gamers is a recipe for disapointment for everybody). Once you've got that down, determining which rules to follow becomes much more obvious. My sole complaint is that the authors didn't introduce this concept much sooner in the book.
   
   I haven't checked the index yet but I suspect that it isn't that good compared to the normal GURPS standard simply because it is 2 pages long and this book should have at least a 20 page index.
   
   The artwork is up to the usual very high standard for GURPS 4th edition and the authors have included a small selection of example stories that help you envision the possibilities (my favorite is about a group of Roman Legionaires who are attacking Rommel's tanks in the desert. You think the struggle would be uneven until you realize that all of the Legionaires have genetic modifications). I wish there were more stories, those stories made a huge difference in my appreciation of GURPS Magic but there's so much here already I can easily understand why the authors made the decision they did.
   
   This book will help a GM enhance just about any campaign you can think of; fantasy, modern, science fiction, supers, horror, etc.
   
   In short, buy this book!



2. I was so excited to get this book. Imagine a book that combines all of the GURPS time travel books and information from 3Ed. Everything looks beautiful down to the hard back spine and cool new look and layout. When it arrived from Amazon I cracked it open and started to read. When I got to the section on explanations for time travel my heart sank. Could the idiot writers not come up with anything more original than a demon abusing you in the most fowl way in order to time travel? Steve Jackson should be ashamed. I love roleplaying books but not that much. I still have some values I'd like to live up to. Oh how the mighty have fallen. I'm glad Amazon let me return mine. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.



3. GURPS Infinite Worlds is truly one of the best tools created by GURPS. It comes with descriptions of dozens of worlds to use, and gives every thing you need to make new ones. Infinity, the corporation that travels through the worlds (and the books main route to exploration)is incredibly detailed, all the way down to day-to-day operations. It evens includes a handy guide for timetravel. And, of course, infinite enemies to run into are described, complete with templates to use. It deserves its award.



4. What I've always looked for in a GURPS book is a book that can be used in a variety of campaigns at a variety of TLs, equally useful in a fantasy campaign as in a futuretech campaign. Well, except for ones that warn you in the title, like Fantasy and Magic.
   
   "Infinite Worlds" is a lot for a book to live up to. In defense of this book's critics, this book is finite in length, but the different ideas in here combined with the different ways you can implement them, lead to almost infinite variety. This book doesn't just cover time travel, but dimensional travel as well, including alternate histories, alternate worlds and just plain different places from our own.
   
   With the tools in this book you can either play in the core campaign, invent your own brand-new campaign or create Sliders, Stargate, Lovecraft's maddening world-hopping, Starjammer or any combination in between.
   
   In a pleasant departure from modern RPG standards, the book is almost completely devoid of copyediting errors and is of exceptionally high quality.

5 comments about Fantasy Baseball Strategy: Advanced Methods for Winning Your League.

1. If the author truly has a PhD in astrophysics, as suggested by one reviewer, he must have a Bush speechwriter as a ghostwriter since most of the book is at about an 8th grade level.
   
   This book will help you only if you are a fantasy baseball novice, and you play in the same type of shallow mixed type league as the author. Or if you are an 8th grader.
   
   Otherwise the strategies presented within have all been done before, and often written about more clearly and in greater detail by earlier authors.
   
   If you are desperate to spend 20 bucks on this book, send it to me, and I'll send you the book and 10 bucks change. Otherwise you would be better served to read older books by John Benson, Alex Patton, Art McGee, Ron Shandler, and Pete Golenbock. Many of the editions are old or out of print but can be picked up for a few bucks either on Amazon or Alibris.



2. I can't tell you how valuable I found Henry Lee's book! After mainly floundering in our 12-team league for 12 years, I followed Henry's strategies for our draft and was in the top three all year, only to drop to fourth on the last day of the season. If you want a strategy that will catapult you to the top, look no further. Henry is the REAL DEAL! I highly recommend this book and Henry's spreadsheet to anyone who wants to win it not just be in it. Thank you, Henry!



3. Read this in prep for my first auction draft to get a handle on the differences between that and the regular snake drafts I always played. Offered great insight on objective ways to evaluate and rank everybody. Also good chapters on strategy as well to help avoid pitfalls during auction. Recommended as a good read for anyone venturing into (or are already in) auction drafts.



4. This might be useful in going up against newbies, or the moronic. However, if you are in a long term savvy league (like me) there is nothing here to gain. I'll save you money - trade for marginal value. Ta da! All the valuations are geared towards a roto auction draft. It is useless for snake drafts and his psychological tricks theory applies poorly to online leagues where communication is strictly by email. Also, the system does not account for Head to Head leagues where those ten homers in the first month mean nothing at the end of the season. To be fair, he does dedicate about five sentences to Head to Head in the book - all to say his theories apply just as well. I'll just read the Baseball Prospectus next year and end up first in both my leagues (again) without this tripe.



5. This book may be of help to a raw beginner, but even then be warned that it's mostly about auction leagues.

No comments about WFF 3 Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper (Wicked Fantasy Factory) (Wicked Fantasy Factory).