Exactly what the product says. The configurations of ships you can build with the beauty is staggering, and well worth the price of the product. Excellent buy!

I truly like this game. I liked it so much that it has prompted me to write my first review ever here at Drivethrurpg after being a member for several years. Additionally, it makes me what to RUN it, as opposed to play, which is something I have rarely done.

This game is grim and gritty in the fashion of the classic pulp swords and sorcery tales of yesteryear.

Combat is deadly and magic is ritualistic and dangerous. It is devoid of the Tolkien influenced standards and is a human-centric such as the tales of R.E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Lieber.

It is also rules lite which I definitely prefer.

My criticisms are few and minor.

I think the work suffers from sub-par cover art. Not to deride the artist, but I the cover art would have been better as an interior piece.

The ritual Lady's Mercy seems a tad underpowered as it seems no better than the heal skill. Maybe increasing the return to 2 or 3.

Finally, maybe a fate point mechanic. As, the heroes in the tales of the authors mentioned above seemed to recover faster, and make it through against the odds.

So, a big thanks to Mr. Davis and Mr. Butler for a great game.

A journey begins with but a single step... but here the first stage in what promises to become an epic journey-based adventure, one where much of the adventure is the journey, sweeps the characters from attending a jovial festival across the breadth of the land and indeed towards the edges of explored territory.

Beginning with a campaign overview and then delving deep into background, the product starts with a collection of monsters, items and other game mechanics - including the theme 'Hero of Song' which is rather interesting - before looking at an overview of the lands which will be travelled. There's a lot for the DM to take aboard, but it is well worth it to aid in the development of a rich background through which the party will travel. Throughout, there are suggestions for running the adventure from motivations to participate through to nightmares the characters may suffer.

With the overarching theme being one of travel, the actual adventure itself is presented in a wonderfully flexible way. Once the characters have accepted their task, you are presented with a range of encounters and events to run as appropriate whilst the party travels through the areas which have already been described. The party has freedom to choose their own route and most events can occur as and when you decide during their travels. Random encounters and notes on survival are also provided. It is important to highlight how the journey begins in lands familiar to the characters, but how every step takes them further into unknown territory.

The flexibility of this approach allows the DM to tailor the adventure to his players' tastes. Events where role-playing or investigation might be appropriate are presented in such a way that challenges can be met through die-rolling or by playing out the encounter as preferred. There are also specific quest targets set which may be attempted or ignored... some are incidental, some will advance the core plot. Everything is well laid out with all the game mechanical information you need to hand, and plenty of flavour text on which to base your descriptions. At the beginning, in particular, there is quite a lot of 'read aloud' text to get essential information over. You may need to break this up or otherwise vary the presentation to avoid players being overwhelmed by 'info-dump' especially if they are not the sort to enjoy listening to lengthy discourses.

As the adventure gets into its stride, however, there are plenty of opportunities for the characters to engage in combat and in the struggle to survive often hostile environments. Again, game mechanical information, appropriate maps and notes on the opposition's combat tactics are put at your fingertips. To add variety, there's a story-telling challenge and even a pub game called Seven Tiles for which sufficient information is provided for you to recreate it if wished, as opposed to disposing of a game with a couple of skill rolls which other groups might prefer. There is even a dungeon-crawl (just the one) which provides an action-packed session... and this episode ends with a good fight!

An appendix provide full-page versions of all encounter maps ready for you to use as appropriate.

Overall, the adventure is excellent with a wide mix of activities to suit all types of group with inherent flexibility to enable you to delve deeper into those encounters that most interest your players and a tight plotline that yet manages to work in a 'sandbox' style giving players the feeling that they are very much in control of their own destiny.

Close assault weapons are used in situations where you need to get close up and personal with the opposition. Ranges are short and combat can be fierce. Whilst the classical close assault involves fighting your way through a building or within an urban environment, many of the same principles can be applied to a running battle through a starship or space station.... with the added delights of micro-gravity and vacuum to contend with in many cases, a common trick being to turn off the artificial gravity when someone's trying to board your ship, and careless use of projectile weapons in a pressurised environment tends to lead to a loss of atmosphere.

These and other perils of space combat are discussed with appropriate rule mechanics to cover such as recoil in microgravity environments and some of the techniques used by experienced space fighters to maintain control of themselves and their weapons.

After a brief word on terminology regarding firearm types, a series of 'actual' (well, invented) weapons are presented. This is mostly flavour text (and some rather nice illustrations) to allow gunbunny characters to enthuse over their favourite weapons with as much detail as a contemporary gun enthusiast can with the real thing, or at least a gun magazine, in his hands. It's nice to be able to put some detail to the somewhat generic stats presented in the core rulebooks, and everything is described in 'realistic' terms - you might almost be reading a real gun catalogue.

I'm addicted to starship supplements, especially those with deck plans. I am running a sci fi tabletop RPG and started out looking for some neat ship designs to fit into my campaign. Very soon I had far more than I needed, but I kept acquiring them with the idea that I'd end up using the best of what I had in the game. I point this out to explain that I have perused, purchased and poured over many, many, many supplements much like the Apparition Class from Avalon Game Company.

This one my friends is one of the best. The book is full of useful information, cool maps, some in-game commentary on development and use of the ships of this class and so on. The ship very much feels like you could park one on a football field, walk in and fly away in it. (I think we all wish we could do this...)

So Bravo to Avalon, and to Noah J. Ternullo, the author. Noah has created something that is best in class in a crowded field. The only products I've seen that are as good are the Future Armada Series by Ryan Wolfe. (His company was formerly Ki Ryn Studios and is now I believe "0 hr." Any of his products are well worth your time if you're in the market for neat ships. It is my sincerest hope that this team puts out many more excellent ship supplements.

Overall I liked this book, and I would buy the sequels (when written). There aren't many Traveller novels out there, and now that Traveller 5 is out, I find I really want to read more Traveller fiction. There are quite a few battle scenes, and sometimes you get the sense that someone just had a bad, bad dice roll.

The interplay between the characters feels better written in the beginning half of the book. In the first half I felt like the characters had to make tough choices and were forced to fight.

In the second half, more new characters are introduced, and I started to loose focus on them all. The story seemed to wander about too. In the second half, the characters seemed more to choose to fight and I wasn't really convinced about how intelligent those decisions were.

Also, I really would have liked to see a sector map, like in Paul Brunette's The Death of Wisdom novel.

This is a great set for the creation of dungeon environments with modular pieces. The textures look great when printed and are consistent with each other.

I would like to stress the fact that the pieces are easy to build. Seriously, each pillar or wall section takes only a couple of minutes to cut and fold. I enjoyed cutting the pieces and building some test rooms to see how they fit together, and the results look good. The assembly system for the pillars and walls is simple and the built-in tolerances mean that you do not have to be super precise when cutting. All pieces can be stored flat, which means that they do not have to take a lot of space when not in use. Just be sure of printing in thick cardstock, so that your pieces can endure the folding and unfolding.

It is possible to use this set to build completely flat maps, using the provided tiles and connectors. Since the connectors are used to create passages between rooms, you do not need a lot of different versions. Need an L-shaped corridor? Use two straight sections linked with an elbow connector. Going up one step, it is possible to add some stand-alone doors to mark passageways, common doors and gates. Once again, the slottable doors allow variation without having to build lots of pieces. To fully utilize the set, one can build pillars and walls to have a completely three-dimensional dungeon model.

I hope that expansions are added to this product line, including different types of stairs, dungeon props and different wall and floor textures.

This PDF is presented in clear easy text, with simple layout and pleasing but minimal decorations. The writing is also clear and concise with only a few grammatical errors to break the flow.

"How to Spice up your Game" consists of 6 techniques GM may use to shake up their games. Each technique is fully explained with tips for incorporating it and examples of its use.

The techniques themselves range from the useful (using restricted PC knowledge to foster surprise) to the tricky (giving players control of the story -- including voting on story elements!) to the kinda obvious (miniatures -- but even here, there is some useful information). Other techniques include using riddles and puzzles to challenge the players over the characters, and using mini-games during an RPG to simulate in-game activities. Some of these ideas are not fully developed and others will radically alter gameplay. All of them will require careful thought, and some of them will require group discuss, extra GM work and/or some experimentation before they can be usefully incorporated into a game.

All told, "How to Spice up your Game" is a thoughtful little book with some intrigue ideas that GMs -- particularly new GMs or GMs that find their games becoming routine -- will find a useful starting point for trying some new things at the table.

Whilst the idea of a 'Supervillain supermarket' is not new, this is a good presentation of the concept that has been thought through in some detail.

The basic concept is simple. Supervillians do not operate independently, at leas, not all of the time. They need hirelings, they need items you cannot buy off the shelf and so on. So they have to go to an organisation that will supply their needs, no questions asked, cash on the nail, thank you very much.

Novel features of Crime Unlimited include its mobile nature. They prefer to operate out of a club or bar, but shift location every few weeks. It's almost a status symbol amongst the supervillain community to know where they are this month. Once accepted as a customer, you can literally get just about anything that you need - but don't cross them: they don't like that and tend to react forcefully, indeed terminally.

Adventure seeds around them are provided for both Hero and Villain games. For example, you don't always have to pay cash for that weapons grade plutonium you need to fuel your death ray, if it suits them they'll have you owe a favour instead. But they might sell that favour on to someone else... Or ask you to do something you really don't want to do.

Plenty here for you to weave into your adventures, complete with main characters statted up for Heroes Unlimited. If you play a different super-powered game, it shouldn't be too hard to re-stat them, and the concepts will, of course, hold good.

Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/02/13/tabletop-review-how-to-spice-up-your-game/

How To Spice Up Your Game is a short book about using techniques to better play tabletop role-playing games. If that sounds horribly dumb and dry to you, trust me it’s not, this is actually quite a good little book. I did not expect much from the title, to be honest. It’s not professionally produced or anything, but it is nicely laid out, has a nice background, and lots of illustrations of dice. This book is focused on material for game masters, and if you are looking for more material like that check out a few of the other books I’ve reviewed in this area:

The GM’s Field Guide To Players

Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Session Prep

This book is very straightforward in its approach; there is no foreword or lengthy sections explaining things about game mastering, there is only a brief introduction and then six techniques of spiciness. Each technique is a different chapter and contains smaller sections explaining the concept, the effect on gameplay, ways to implement the concept, tips, and examples. Each chapter makes up about three pages.

The first chapter, for example, is about the concept of “restricted knowledge” which is a pretty common and well-known tool with GMs (if not always well-implemented). This really needs no explanation as it is exactly what you think it is: essentially keeping players from playing the game from the meta level instead of the character level by letting individual characters have knowledge instead of the entire table. Some other concepts need more explaining, like the next chapter which is entitled “Explore the World”. You really need to read this chapter through to figure out what the author means by this and how it affects play, as the title is too opaque and the implementation not obvious enough for someone to grasp it immediately.

Overall, I was really impressed with this book. Though small, there are a lot of really great ideas that are well explained and presented here. Each concept is presented in such a way that you can read it and find yourself nodding your head, instantly thinking about your gaming group or a game you have run and where you could have used these concepts. The chapter on “representation”, where you help your players visualize the game world by using real world analogs or other helpful correlations, happened to hit home for me regarding a game I am running right now, and how I could help the players visualize the place they are in right now and involve them more in the space. The author offers variants and shallower or deeper levels of all of the techniques, so that a GM can play around with using these ideas and see if they need to really focus on them or if they can keep them in the background. The cost does seem a bit prohibitive, but I have no qualms about saying this is worth the six bucks being asked. It’s a bit steep for a short, non-professional book on GMing, but this is really good stuff and I will be printing out a copy of this to keep on hand. Now that is saying something!

A well made and complete product. Thanks. How about a subscription?

This issue presents a neat minor-league supervillain called The Professor. His backstory is quite amusing, a wonderful two-bit villain who has kept his day job and so can only pursue his nefarious plots at the weekends, or maybe the odd evening after work as long as he doesn't stay out too late!

The poor fellow has been a bit of a failure in life - both career-wise and socially - and to be honest he seems set fair to make as little impact on the 'Super' scene as he has in real life. It's difficult not to feel a bit sorry for him.

Several ideas for incorporating him into your adventures are provided, rather neatly divided so that he can be a villain or a hero - or at least, try to be - as best suits your campaign needs. He's really supposed to be a vilain so the option is given of him trying his hand at being a superhero after his attempts at supervillainry have proved so uttlerly unsuccessful - a nice touch!

A full character sheet, complete with colour illustration, as well as paper 'standee' miniatures of The Professor and four generic SWAT team members (why? Oh well, they'll probably come in useful..) round this issue out.

I have not yet met a Traveller player who is not fascinated by his character's weapons! Here is a neat selection of sidearms that any Traveller character should be delighted to have about his person... or indeed, in his kitbag!

It opens with a brief yet scholarly introduction as to what constitutes a 'sidearm' - basically a small offensive weapon designed primarily for self-defence, capable of being carried more or less constantly without getting in the way, yet able to be brought to bear whenever the need arises.

This is followed by a selection of such weapons, each with the sort of loving description that the average gun-bunny can drool over yet clear enough for those for whom weapons are mere tools to understand just what it is that they are purchasing. For those who like to see what they are getting, there are clear diagrammatic line illustrations (in colour, of course).

The real joy is in making them sound interesting and realistic. Pull out your Tactical ShotSystems Intimidator next time you venture down a dark alley, perhaps. Far better than just grabbing a snub pistol....

The one thing I miss is a handy chart of the relevant game mechanics. They're all there, but embedded in the text. As the text is a delight to read, that's no hardship... but the chart is useful once the bullets start to fly.

Overall I liked this booklet. I'm not fond of "modular weapons" where by switching accessories one weapon does everything. For the most part, however, this booklet made it believable and I'll be using some of these in my games.

The drawings were well done. I will be looking for the rest in this series.

Put simply, this is a neat little jail break caper than can be run as a stand-alone or as part of your regular campaign. The situation is clearly presented with several options, from the default of rescuing one Dr. Plague from the clutches of law enforcement through to having to rescue a fellow superpowered player-character...

As a one-off, it can be fun to play the villains for a change. Even if your characters are normally on the side of the angels, even good guys sometimes run foul of the law... this is especially an occupational hazard if your party are typical superhero vigilantes rather than sworn officers of the law (and even those sometimes end up on the wrong side of the bars for real or alleged violations).

Various preparatory options are presented to allow the characters to scout out the 'Superhuman Containment Facility' at the local precinct house and then to gain access to those held within, giving plenty opportunity for them to talk and investigate and infiltrate before the inevitable brawl begins. Once it does, there are 'regular' police officers to prevent the escape attempt (if you want any superpowered ones, you will need to find or roll them up for yourself), and the caper is additionally provided with some nice plans of the precinct house and the Superhuman Containment Facility so that you can play out events with a good idea of your surroundings - including the use of miniatures or counters if preferred.

A neat and clear caper, well suited to a single session of play.