Post by Gilvan Blight on Apr 30, 2012 21:45:58 GMT -5
This review is based on reading the material only. I have yet to run a game using this boxed set (though I am starting one on May 19th 2012).
This is a bit of a mixed bag. I was totally blown away by the production values on this. It's amazing looking with amazing bits. The two full colour rule books were beautiful. Not only were they filled with art, each section was colour coded. They are probably the best laid out RPG books I've ever seen. The flip mat is awesome, and I'm still shocked that a blank one was included (there's a dungeon on the other side). A full set of dice and cardboard standees for all of the heroes and monsters round this one off. I love teh standees, so much better than pogs.
Sounds great right, well I did say it was a mixed bag. I wasn't totally happy with the content. There just didn't seem to be enough there. The sample dungeon isn't even enough to get a group to 2nd level. There's the start of a second dungeon but it's barely fleshed out. Given that there are rules to go from level 1 to level 5 in here, that's putting a ton of work on a new GMs head. In addition there was quite a bit of info that to me is too deep to be in a beginner box. All of the terrain rules. There were page after page about difficult ground this, minus that to acrobatics, partially obscured this and this check required every hour there. To me that's not beginners stuff. Perhaps some of this could have been put into sample adventures with notes like "this is the kind of stuff you can do to make encounters interesting" instead of Forests have these types of terrains and the rules for it are this.
Overall I'm still very impressed, just not as impressed as I was when I first opened the box. Odd as it sounds with the material that's in the box I think it may have been better only going up to level 3. That or add more content to give a GM more to work with to keep the group interested until level 5
This is a bit of a mixed bag. I was totally blown away by the production values on this. It's amazing looking with amazing bits. The two full colour rule books were beautiful. Not only were they filled with art, each section was colour coded. They are probably the best laid out RPG books I've ever seen. The flip mat is awesome, and I'm still shocked that a blank one was included (there's a dungeon on the other side). A full set of dice and cardboard standees for all of the heroes and monsters round this one off. I love teh standees, so much better than pogs.
Sounds great right, well I did say it was a mixed bag. I wasn't totally happy with the content. There just didn't seem to be enough there. The sample dungeon isn't even enough to get a group to 2nd level. There's the start of a second dungeon but it's barely fleshed out. Given that there are rules to go from level 1 to level 5 in here, that's putting a ton of work on a new GMs head. In addition there was quite a bit of info that to me is too deep to be in a beginner box. All of the terrain rules. There were page after page about difficult ground this, minus that to acrobatics, partially obscured this and this check required every hour there. To me that's not beginners stuff. Perhaps some of this could have been put into sample adventures with notes like "this is the kind of stuff you can do to make encounters interesting" instead of Forests have these types of terrains and the rules for it are this.
Overall I'm still very impressed, just not as impressed as I was when I first opened the box. Odd as it sounds with the material that's in the box I think it may have been better only going up to level 3. That or add more content to give a GM more to work with to keep the group interested until level 5