Reviews

The Slaying Stone by Logan Bonner is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure for a group of 1st level characters designed to take the players all the way through first level. It is a standalone adventure with a straightforward premise: recover a potent magic item that can (possibly) kill anyone or anything (sufficiently low in level) nearly instantaneously. This relic, known as the Slaying Stone, lies in the ruins of a town which was overrun nearly a decade prior by an invading horde of goblins. The player characters are called on to venture into town, find the slaying stone and return it.
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City Builder: A Guide to Designing Communities is a detailed and comprehensive book on creating communities, from small plantations to large cities. It can be used for most role playing games with a bias towards historically-based or low fantasy settings. While GMs of pseudo-historical games might be in the best position to use the book as-is, every GM interested in community building should get this book. For high-fantasy GMs, the supplement provides tips for making the world seem real and gives a number of interesting locales for inspiration. ...

When the news broke last year that the Dark Sun Campaign Setting would be finally brought back to life in 4th Edition, I thought it was a brilliant move. I remember many years ago cracking open the Dark Sun box set for the first time and flipping through the accompanying sample adventure -- it literally flipped open from the top and was free standing so that on one side the players would see the accompanying art and on the other, the DM had the adventure notes. I was so enthralled with the new setting, I even skipped a few classes the next day to run some of my high school buddies through the starter adventure. (Shhh, don't tell!) I loved the world of Athas, and so did my players, even if all of their characters died in the first few encounters ...

In the Company of Giants is one of the latest supplements by Rite Publishing that expands on their ever burgeoning campaign setting, Questhaven. This time, Steven Russell turns his attention to creating a playable race of giants, known as Jotun. (For the curious, a quick Wikipedia search will reveal “jötunn” to be the name given to giants of Norse mythology.) Though the jotun may be themed for giants of the Questhaven setting, everything within is completely portable to any 3.5e or Pathfinder game, which includes a full racial class progression from 1st to 20th level, a titan’s fistful of elemental themed powers, and several pages of feats to add to your jotun’s retinue ...