2 comments about Dragonlance Holy Order of the Stars (Dragonlance).

1. I must say, everything that I have ever wanted to know about the different religions on Ansalon is covered in this book. For those of you constantly struggling over how to pronounce a certain gods name is also covered, along with all their different names to the different nationalities of Ansalon. Highly recommend this book to all who travel the world of Krynn.



2. Excellent source book. As usual for the 3.5 edition of Dragonlance books, the artwork is really good.

3 comments about Gurps High-Tech.

1. Like many 4th edition GURPS books, this is a major rewrite of an existing book. Like Ultra Tech, this book goes so much further beyond its original material that it is essentially a whole new book.
   
   The greatest weakness of the original High-Tech book was that it was primarily about guns and their history and it was organized as an historical reference rather than a roleplaying reference. Another issue was that one slender volume attempted to cover all equipment from the beginning of the age of gunpowder to the modern era.
   
   In spite of the authors best efforts, this was simply too much material for a single book and it tended to either get lost in the details or was so vague as to be nearly useless. I bought the original book and loved it for quite a while because it fit a niche in my military history library, not because it was useful for roleplaying (although the authors added some desperately needed charts that did help considerably on that front).
   
   The new book reduces it's area of coverage to about 225 years instead of nearly 500 years and does a tremendously better job of explaining the effects of the items on roleplaying. The book has marvelous illustrations and quotes and the now-ubiquitous short stories that add a lot of interest to their rules explanations. Admittedly the history suffers a bit but that's a price I'm willing to pay.
   
   Another advantage is that the new book is a lot bigger as well, with 256 pages instead of the original 128. This provides room to give detailed histories for particular items such as the AK-47 that the characters are likely to encounter more frequently.
   
   There's still a LOT of weapons and the nicely written descriptions don't cover all the weapons in the book but the enormous effort that went into this book was most definitely NOT wasted. This is another welcome addition to the GURPS universe!



2. Gurps High Tech is a great sourcebook for historical or modern gaming set from the mid 1700's to today. Unlike previous editions of the book High Tech isn't just about firearms (though the chapter on weaponry is half the book) it also includes information on a wide variety of other historical technology. There's information technology from printing presses to word processing software, information transfer tech from hand caried mail to e-mail, and protective gear from summer clothing to space suits. Best of all the book doesn't just list game stat's for everything (although it has them too) it describes it in real world terms so you can create your own stats for other games.



3. GURPS attempts to satisfy campaigns across pretty much every genre, in pretty much every time period. The standard basic characters/campaigns books, plus perhaps Magic, Fantasy, and Banestorm make life pretty easy for a fantasy GM, while the basic books plus perhaps UltraTech, Infinite Worlds, Space, BioTech, or Traveller Interstellar Wars make life easy for a sci fi GM. Until now, it has been a bit problematic running a campaign set between the civil war and near-tech cyberpunk.
   
   High Tech addresses this time period. It concentrates on ironmongery, with real world examples of weapons and ammunition as used throughout history. It includes dates of introduction and wide reproduction for time travel games, and enough information for people generally unfamiliar with firearms to sound the part of their gunslinger characters.
   
   It also has many, many pages of non-weapon/armor equipment, and frankly, that was the part I liked the most. My players enjoyed being able to look up a diving bell, a WW2 tank, and a napoleaonic-era timepiece.
   
   For what it is worth, my minimal set of GURPS books is the main two, plus magic, ultra tech, and now high tech. With those, I can generally convert items from other systems or wing it, regardless of era.

5 comments about Unapproachable East (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying, Forgotten Realms Setting).

1. "Unapproachable East" is an excellent Source Book, full of yummy background info and flavour elements. The details and info on the various sub-regions presented are quite refined and are very interesting. The maps are perfectly made, while the Feats and Prestige Classes are of excellent quality and help you give the right tone and regional "feel" for your character.
   
   I remain disappointed at the artwork and will therefore limit my review to 4 stars.
   
   stef_bocklin



2. I am not sure were some of the reviewers get their ideas, but this book is an ideal reference book. It does go over materials that are already written, but thats the idea. The book is not suppose to create material or change what was already written. If you dont want to collect all the old materials on the East by the original TSR authors, this book is perfect.



3. Very informative of details within the area, especially like the maps of the regions. A must if you wish to base your campaigns in this area. A definate fine addition to my D&D library.



4. This Accessory gives a lot of info to go on a adventure around thay, Aglarond, Rashemen and other places with full detail.
   Just enough to make your players have a rough time being on the land of the red wizards =D.
   A great book !!! a must have indeed.



5. Unapproachable East is a fascinating setting, and this book provides a good overview. I especially like the material on The Great Dale, Aglarond, and Rashemen. There is a clear effort to give equal treatment to nations other than the most famous of the bunch, Thay.
   
   The flaw in this book is the ratio of content/page count. Now the only other FR sourcebook I own is the FRCS, so perhaps this is par for the course, but this book includes a statistics block listing the classes/levels of every inhabitant of most towns/villages. Who cares that the village of Kront has 22 level 2 Commoners and 133 level 1 Commoners? This is, in my opininon, a waste of page space. This sort of detail (in the event it is ever required) is easily generating using the guidelines from the DMG. In fact, I half suspect the authors wrote a computer program to generate these blocks. This is just one example of filler content. As a second example, the "Important Characters" blurb for each town/village is little more than a list of randomly generated names.
   
   This level of meaningless detail steals page space from the real content of the sourcebook; there are only a paltry 13 pages on "Adventuring in the East".
   
   Don't get me wrong, this sourcebook contains some solid information. Another review criticizes this sourcebook for replicating material from other sources, such as spells. The flip side of replicating material is that the consumer isn't forced to buy those other sourcebooks. In fact, the real content/page ratio could have easily been improved by including replicated material from some other sourcebooks.
   
   My recommendation is to buy this sourcebook, but only at less than full price.

2 comments about GURPS Ultra-Tech (Gurps).

1. Customizable armor! Like energy cloth baselayer with the fit and feel of spandex (scuba lycrasuits or the compression shirt you wear under football pads) with DR 20 (melee attacks from non-superscience weapons from non-giants, handgun bullets) to replace the star trek turtlenecks for non-combatant military crew. Personal defelector shields, neural interface helmets, chameolon armor, printed computers on armor+clothing, particle beams (GURPS blasters), plasma weapons (star wars blasters), nanotechnology and all. covers TL9-12, strict. Scale is personal to small vehicles. Superscience items (shields, contragravity, time manipulation, psionic devices) are clearly marked.
   
   This has been rushed-through the editing process, but SJGames is pretty good with errata updates.



2. The third edition of GURPS Space was an amazing effort. One slim volume included all rules needed to run a very wide range of SciFi-oriented roleplaying campaigns. This included a lot of information about: how to generate star systems, create and run starships, economics of trade between star systems, lots of science fiction equipment, character archtypes, campaign backgrounds, etc., etc. Literally to infinity and beyond. The book was like the old saying about the Platte river, a mile wide and an inch deep.
   
   While it was an amazing effort, the lack of space left the game feeling very generic and somewhat incomplete. This could be overcome with dedicated effort but most GM's didn't feel it was worth the extra work. The third edition Ultra-tech books attempted to address this problem but were not SJ Games finest efforts.
   
   I bought both 4th edition GURPS Space and Ultra-Tech with this background in mind and was surprised and pleased.
   
   The new GURPS Space doesn't cover nearly as much as the original book, it just deals with the background material necessary to set up and run a good campaign. Many people felt cheated by this because they enjoyed browsing through the old third edition's plentiful charts and building starships using the surprisingly detailed (and sometimes painful) variant of GURPS Vehicles.
   
   But I felt this was a good decision because Science Fiction can have such a large and varied background that is so important to the story that the GM is trying to tell that it deserved the coverage it got. Imagine trying to describe all of the technology and background used in both Keith Laumer's Bolo stories and David Brin's Uplift novels in less than 50 pages.
   
   The bigger surprise was the new version of GURPS Ultra-Tech. This is really well thought-out and interesting and fixes a lot of the weaknesses of the old system. The vastly larger space for the topic was very well used and the illustrations and short stories are worth the price of the book all by themselves. Another pleasant discovery was the extensive bibliographies in both books. The people who wrote the books knew their topics well and loved to share.
   
   Yet another piece of the puzzle in replacing the old third edition GURPS Space book was recently published in electronic format at SJ Games e23 store. I haven't bought it yet but the new GURPS Spaceships is supposed to be much easier to use and more interesting for generating ships to have adventures in. Which is the point of all three books.

5 comments about City of the Spider Queen (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.0 Fantasy Roleplaying, Forgotten Realms Setting).

1. It's a good epic adventure designed to take the characters from 10-18th level. It does that remarkably well because the monsters and villans are smartly designed and planned and the book is well laid out with clear maps and excellent descriptions.

   Still there are a few problems.
   1). Some of the monsters are tougher than their challenge rating suggests. Drider Vampires are a good example.
   2). Any party without a rogue and a cleric are in for a rough time. This might seem self-evident, but not every party has one.
   3). There isn't much downtime. The author makes this a clear point, but characters with item creation feats might as well have spent them in skill focus profession bum. 8 levels is a long time to go without creating any items.




2. The storyline is good, especially if you enjoy killing the drow.
   One aspect of the adventure that is both good and bad is its length. The adventure is LONG and allows for very little downtime. This means characters have no time to make magic items and worse, wizards in the party don't even have time to learn new spells forcing them to rely on their "free spells" they gain for level advancement.
   Absolutely can't be done without a cleric, I wouldn't even try. The monsters are tough and a huge portion are undead with level and ability score draining ability which means you need a cleric who can use restoration not to mention healing.
   Descriptions are good and the adventure does a good job describing how enemies react to PCs such as countermeasures they employ, alert postitions, and battle strategies. Also the "Powered up" stats given for enemies that cast spells on themselves before combat means you don't have to add in the various spell effects yourself.



3. This is an awesome awesome adventure which did almost everything right when it was written (without seriously cheating the players). But then Wizards of the Coast changed all of the magic right from under everybody by releaseing 3.5e.
   
   In this 3.0 compliant adventure...
   - Almost everybody has spell resistance
   - Most casters use haste to get extra partial actions which are usually used to cast Lightning Bolt
   - Drow can use darkness when they don't want to be seen
   
   But in d20 3.5e,
   - Spell resistance is easily bypassed by most conjuration magic (except for healing).
   - Haste doesn't give casters much of any advantage except footspeed.
   - Darkness has been nerfed from "darkness" to "shadowy illumination".
   
   This has two major overall impacts:
   - Drow shouldn't be studying any magic other than conjuration. Everybody's got spell resistance, so anything short of Cloudkill (which SR does not apply to in 3.5) is a waste of time.
   - The straight Drow encounters are still going to be really pretty weenie.
   
   If you've still got the 3.0 books about, this is a great adventure, loaded with atmosphere and plot unparallelled by the other adventures I've seen (which generally result in the heroes saving the day just in the nick of time despite having taken 5 years of downtime to craft magical items). Otherwise, you may want to alter the Drow -- or at least reinstate the old SR rules -- to ensure that this adventure plays as well as it did a couple of years ago. Because in d20 3.5e, the overrated dark elves are the least of anybody's problems.



4. I bought this adventure hoping for maps and info on Menzoberranzan, as in all the novels I've read, it was referred to as the City of the Spider Queen, City of Spiders, whatever. Instead it's about Myrmidea or whatever, a city I'd never heard of, and I've read 3 of the 6 War of the Spider Queen novels. However, it IS an excellent adventure, from what I've read in it, and, having bought it for a VERY good price, I got my moneys worth and then some.



5. I completely agree that when this was written for 3.0 it must have been much harder. It does require some fixing, especially the all Drow encounters. It took about 3 months of playing time (3 hours 1/week) to get through, and the PC's gained 4 levels out of it. They did manage to emerge twice before finishing it, but my group is very experienced. It was a good module though, even though it needs a little updating. It's not going to make the PC's rich, not that I remember anyway. I used this module plus the Underdark supplement. Really fun times.

1 comments about Making Terrain and Buildings for Historical Wargames.

1. I bought this book hoping it would show me in detail how to go about making terrain in a step by step kind of way in order to take my terrain skills to a higher level. In a couple of cases it does that but these are few and far between. There is some discussion on techniques but these are more beginner to intermediate ideas.
   
   The section on modular terrain is probably the section I got the most out of and it is fairly comprehensive with a number of techniques and ideas on how to go about it.
   
   There is a lot of discussion on a wide variety of terrain manufacturers and supporting companies and the products they make and some ideas for there use and that is where this book really has value as it also lists manufacturers including web addresses.
   
   In it are a lot of colour photographs which themselves provide a lot of inspiration. Unfortunately the photos are more focused on the miniatures than the terrain they are on but this is a minor distraction.
   
   Its an OK book well worth adding to your library if your a beginner to intermediate terrain builder and a good reference for the rest of us.

No comments about Dragons of Spring (Dragonlance Campaign Setting) (War of the Lance Chronicles, Volume 3).

1 comments about Kids Classics-Slap Jack.

1. One of my elderly neighbors wanted so badly to have a new set of Slap-Jack to enjoy with her great grandkids. We looked everywhere and then I found this item on Amazon. She was thrilled to get the Classic Slap Jack cards and said they are the perfect old time set. And her great grandkids are enjoying playing with her. I was pleased to be able to locate the item. And quick shipping and no problems with the order.

3 comments about More Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home: Dragonlance (Dragonlance: Sourcebooks).

1. MORE LEAVES FROM THE INN OF THE LAST HOME is an excellent compiliation of recipies, maps and short tales of both PRE 5th age and POST 5th age. Well worth the money spent, but it doesn't compare to it's precursor, Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home (which they REALLY should reprint). If you are a diehard Dragonlance fan, I don't see how you could be without this book. If you're a casual DL reader, you could probably get along with out it.



2. This is a pretty good book similiar to two previous Dragonlance compilations (the original Leaves from the Inn of the Last Home, and The History of the Dragonlance saga). This book has contributions from Dragonlance fans who wanted to add their ideas about the Dragonlance world. If you're looking for something new you'll find it in here. Having the first two books makes this book a better buy.



3. IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT I HAVE NEVER ACTUALLY READ THIS, I IMAGINE IT'S SPELLBINDING. I DID READ LEAVES OF THE LAST HOME, AND THAT WASN'T SO BAD. IT WASN'T GREAT EITHER, THOUGH.
   SEQUELS ARE USUALLY DISAPPOINTING, IN MY EXPERIENCE. LEAVES OF THE LAST HOME WAS A BIT OF A BURDEN TO READ, TO BE HONEST. IN FACT, I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND EITHER ONE OF THEM. BUT, IF YOU INSIST UPON READING ONE OR THE OTHER, READ LEAVES OF THE LAST HOME FIRST. OR MAYBE SECOND. OR NOT AT ALL. I WOULD TRY THE FORMER, I THINK.

5 comments about Dragonlance War of the Lance (Dragonlance).

1. This book is a great blast from the past. It contains some DL history during the Time of Troubles. Updates important characters to D20. Has new spells, and items. Many artifacts from the War of the Lance. Some PRCs. Talks about the lack of divine magic during the time. Has great art. Talks about what's going on with the nations at the time. This is a favorite time for fans in the DL setting. If you like DL, you must get this book.



2. This book is a must for anyone gaming in the Dragonlance setting. It details the lands and atmosphere of Ansalon during the time of the War of the Lance. It also includes adventure ideas for DMs that want to add a little something to the War of the Lance. Buy yourself a copy or ten, you'll be glad you did.



3. Anything that you want to know about the War of the Lance is in this book. From the way the armies moved, the size of the dragonarmies, to who controlled what land during what portion of the war. So not only is this a great must for gamers, but is also a must for those who loved the Chronicles.



4. This is an invaluable DM tool for planning a campaign in Krynn during everyone's favorite war. The maps are typically subpar. The best maps are available for free to download however.



5. I purchased this thinking it was a follow up to the novel dragonlance, but it wasn't. I think it's something used for role playing???