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This product was a disappointment. I all honesty I could have made better maps with MS Windows Paint program. The maps are highly pixelated & the fonts look like old MS-DOS system font (on a 16 color monitor). With just a bit of effort these maps could have been so much better. A cleaner font, higher resolution images, etc. I am just very thankful all I am out is the $7.50 sale price. I would never have paid $30.00 (the non-sale list price at the time of my purchase) for this poor a product. I will NOT buy from this seller again. Like the old saying goes: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
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Creator Reply: |
The maps are as described (old school) and can easily be previewed at full size. ( As any normal person might do if they are about to spend money on such a product.) Yes these map do show pixels, by design. Each pixel means something. Delete a pixel and you change the thickness of a wall, change they type of lock or trap, remove a secret door, etc.. (The pixel level detail is copyrighted by Stainless Steel Dragon Games for a good reason, and by design.) If you were to try to make these maps in MS Paint, it would take you months if not years to create them. (What is your time worth?) I urge all potential buyers to look at the samples and/or read less bias reviews by other people who can appreciate the details in these maps, and who probably don\'t work for a rival map making company. |
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Fantasy art photos with digital manipulations.
Not bad really, cut from the same cloth as Heavy Metal.
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Overall, this is a good product. I will definitely be using it. The only problem is that the battlemaps have numbers on them, which would normally only be on the overview map. So I will either have to edit the pages in photoshop (a time waste that I was trying to avoid by purchasing this product), or I will have to just accept that numbers will be on the battlemap.
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I’ve always been a fan of cheesecake fantasy artwork. Of course, that’s to be expected, as I’m pretty well the target demographic for such material. For better or for worse, images of scantily-clad sex-fantasies go hand in hand with fantasy (and, to be fair, other genres as well) and I appreciate it when such artwork is released. I suspect that it’s in that spirit that Stainless Steel Dragon released Reflections of Voldaria, a collection of fantasy-themed pictures of sexy women.
Just over a dozen pictures make up Reflections of Voldaria. I was tempted to abbreviate the title as RoV, which is the file name of the PDF of these images; I’m not sure that’s correct, however, as the storefront calls it “AoV,” which was slightly confusing. Which is it?
As I said, the pictures are released as a single PDF, which while not bad is still somewhat inconvenient if you want to manipulate these pictures in any way. Sure, you still can, but it would have been much easier if there had been a collection of individual JPG or PNG files. Still, I have to give the book credit for having full, nested bookmarks so that you can at least easily zip to each page.
The book is surprisingly forthcoming regarding the mechanics of these pictures, telling you the best way to print them out and the dimensions of the images. This is the text that you see on the book’s storefront, but it’s actually the bulk of the introduction.
The bulk of the twenty-five photos here have some sort of photo-manipulation, usually of the background. In this area, there is some slight room for improvement; while the artist clearly tried to minimize a sense of disconnect between the foreground and background images, it still comes through. The scenes feel flat in most cases, as small things that you couldn’t name but still register reinforce a sense of disconnectedness…I imagine this is due to an intrinsic understanding that we all have about how lighting and shadows should look were people actually in the areas depicted.
Each picture has a full-page lead-in, which is an entire page that gives the picture’s title and a two-stanza rhyme describing the picture. This was my biggest complaint about the book – not that the rhymes weren’t very good (though there were some real groaners), but that so much space was wasted with these intro pages. What’s here could easily have been tacked on as a caption to each image, rather than being set in the middle of a huge expanse of white space. There’s just so much more that could have been done to fill it. Personally, I would have loved to have gotten game stats in these pages, as this would have (more than) doubled the book’s practical usefulness; now you have fully-illustrated NPCs!
In regards to the subjects of the photographs, virtually all of them are beautiful women. The rare male does show up, but it’s always in conjunction with a girl, and the guy is always dressed in practical outfits. By contrast, most of the women are nearly-naked, save for the occasional girl in a chain shirt. Personally, I had no problem with this whatsoever, not only because I like sexy women, but also because I find it impossible to complain about “realism” and “verisimilitude” when most fantasy has magic and other perfectly viable explanations for why an adventurer could go around wearing almost nothing and still have a high degree of bodily protection. If you could have a magic spell that protects you as well as a full suit of armor, without the weight or maintenance that the latter requires, then why not?
Having said all of that, there are still some legitimate critiques to be made here. For one, all of the characters are clearly posing for the camera; there are no “action shots” of people engaged in adventuring. A few of these take this to an extreme example, as there’s a close-up of one woman’s face, while a different picture offers us a close-up of a girl’s thong-clad ass. Again, not a big deal, but there’s not even a pretense of this being anything other than blatant sexiness.
Overall, I enjoyed Reflections of Voldaria, but that’s because, as I noted at the beginning, I’m the sort of person who’ll forgive a lot if it means I get to look at sexy, scantily-clad girls. If examined in a technical sense, there is a lot of merit here – the photographs are fairly professional in the sense of the shots conveying what they’re meant to. It’s when you move beyond the technical aspects of the actual photographs of the girls that we see the need for improvement. From the photoshopping to the lack of image files to the huge tracts of white space, there’s more that could have been done in how these images were packaged.
Still, if you’d like to reflect on some lovely ladies, you could do much worse than to check out the Reflections of Voldaria.
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Creator Reply: |
Thank you for you feedback. I appreciate any constructive thoughts that might help me produce a better fantasy photo ebook, I am new at this, and totally open to constructive criticism. You know, for a 4 star review, you seemed to have lot more negative things to say about this ebook then positive, so I am guessing it had some redeeming value, that some how got left out of your review.
Just a few quick notes to address your concerns.
First, I think this book is exactly as described. I should not that 11 of the 25 pics presented here are “pure” photos. No photoshopped backgrounds, thus any flatness/wrongness you see or think you see, is what you would actually see if you actually took a picture of woman on rock with her reflection and the sky behind her in the water. (As I did, with the Lady of the Lake picture and ten others pictures.) Also, most of other shots have clouds or mist for their backgrounds, which by their very nature seem impossible to make flat. However in future works, perhaps I can try to bleed the fog into the foreground more, but then it looks more like smoke then fog. (This is something most other photographers don’t do, but I will consider it, if it makes my work better then theirs.)
Second, yes, as describe, there are lots of woman who are scantly clad, and yes, it may mean they are wearing magical armor as you suggest, (My thought sometimes.) or it could mean you are seeing them, as if across a campfire or in a leisure moment. (Perhaps pausing to make a decision which in many cases was my intent.) Anyone, who has worn real armor, even just chainmail, knows it is heavy and uncomfortable, and generally only those people engaged in actual combat would be caught wearing it for more than hour. Please note, action shots may come when I release a book called the fighting women/men of Voldaria.) This book, was about “reflections,” and thought, hence its name. “Reflections of Voldaria,” or moments of introspection - if you will. I am sorry if you didn’t get it. After your insightful review of my 2012 Calendar, I would have guessed you would have seen it. (It is about art, not action, not sex nor about adventuring,) But your not alone, the first reviewer of this work didn’t get it either. Which saddens me, because that was my primary objective when creating this work, and it seems like everybody missed it. FYI, AoV stands for Age of Volondor, of which RoV, Reflections of Voldaria is the world that surrounds Volondor, and is a much overdue visual supplement. Hence, the 2 names depending upon where you see them, those familiar with AoV would not be confused.
Third, in regards too white-space, this is, after all an ebook, thus no trees were killed in its creation, and the white space can easily be skipped by anyone who wants to see just pictures. It should be noted some photographers, consider the use of white space as a way to understate their work in an artistic way. (There is a big difference in fluffing up a page count in a game book by adding too much white space, and showing artwork with no distractions on the opposing page. Modeled somewhat after a Boris Vallejo coffee table book I once bought.) FYI, I did consider labeling each title on or under the work, but thought that it distracts from the quality and feeling of the picture, and I am somewhat sure some other critics would find fault with that.) Yes, the poetry was as campy as anything Stan Lee might say to introduce people to his Marvel universe, and I am sorry for that. (And it was described as such.) I meant simply to put each picture in the context of Voldaria. (My world and game system, and these are just the first of many images I am offering to give my gamers their first look upon the terrain and denizens of my world.) Still, I appreciate the thought, and in my next book, (Which will have 100+Pics) I will probably just cram the pictures in back to back, and leave the title of pictures to those who seek to find them in the index, Easter egg fashion.
Finally, I do think providing these images in JPG format as opposed to PDF format is a great idea. (I was recently thinking that myself, for my CD releases.) The one problem I have is that I am not sure if RPGnow can support that, except maybe as zip file or a bundle of separated jpg images. Hmmm, maybe I should do that? Offer Poster sized JPGs individually for .50 cent each? What do you think? Then I can bundle them for those who want a volume discount? I guess I should ask them if that okay, It seems like spamming to me, but I am game, if they are. It would mean bigger and better pictures for those people who like my work, and they could buy only what they like. So dear critic, thanks for keeping me honest with this review, hopefully someday my work will evolve into something more praise worthy, or at least without enough fault as to merit such a critical review.
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Calendars are one of those projects where they seem like a no-brainer. After all, you just make twelve pages, one for each month of the year, and have each page list the dates for that month. No big deal, right? However, calendars are one of those areas where the devil is in the details. What holidays do you list? What about other events, such as the phases of the moon? Perhaps the biggest detail, however, is what theme will your calendar have?
In the case of Stainless Steel Dragon’s 2012 Fantasy Female Calendar & Print Set, the theme is beautiful, scantily-clad women.
At twenty-eight pages long, this calendar’s basic construction is pretty much what you’d expect. Given in PDF format, there are twelve sets of calendar listings and an equal number of photos; the array listed is in the standard one photo followed by one month arrangement.
The file opens with an introduction which is the product page information, telling us how these pictures were configured and giving us the default methods of printing out this calendar should we want a hard-copy. It’s fairly boilerplate, but it was nice to have the information listed just to be on the safe side; I doubt I’ll be printing out this calendar, but for those who are interested in doing so, there’s some good, albeit basic, advice here in that regard.
The pictures are, as mentioned, all of beautiful girls in skimpy outfits. The pictures all have a fantasy theme to them, with the outfits having a fantasy-medieval theme, and many of the pictures feature the girls wielding various medieval weapons (e.g. mace, crossbow, etc.). The artwork here is all tasteful, and while titillating doesn’t ever rise to the level of softcore porn – a few pictures are slightly risqué though, such as how Ms. February has most of her ass uncovered, and Ms. August seems to be naked (though positioned in such a way that nothing naughty can be seen).
I should note that full bookmarks are given for this PDF, which makes it very easy if you’re using the file as a calendar for your computer. Interestingly, the bookmark for each month has a nested entry to that month’s picture; it’s here and only here that you’ll find the name of the picture, something I thought was a very fun easter egg.
Likewise, my mention of using this file as your computer calendar was no off-hand remark. As the introduction notes, each day’s entry has been formatted to allow you to post a sticky note there, giving this product an edge of practicality. The calendar days also note the phases of the moon, the solstices and equinoxes, and most major holidays as well.
A few extras are here that should be noted. Each calendar page has small, abbreviated listings for the previous and next month at the top, which is convenient. A fun addition is that, while the days of the week are listed along the top of each calendar’s dates table, it also lists the corresponding deities each day of the week is named for along the bottom.
Overall, I quite liked the 2012 Fantasy Female Calendar. Beyond the delicious cheesecake, the ways in which this product took advantage of the digital format, rather than being held hostage by it, were quite refreshing. From the picture titles in the bookmarks to the sticky notes when you right-click a day, there was comparatively a lot here to enjoy. From sexy images to functionality, this calendar makes 2012 look like it’s going to be a great year.
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The calendar is nothing fancy. It's a calendar. It has the holidays listed on it in a nice light blue to separate them from normal days of the week.
The pictures, on the other hand, make this a good product. The models are not super-models, but real women that I'd expect to find walking down the street (albeit, with a bit more clothing on). The costumes are fun and attractive and the poses are good. February is my favorite. :D
For people who like these sort of calendars (as I do), this is a good product.
It seems this product is geared primarily towards people who want to print the calendar and mount it on their walls. It would be nice for a more digital-friendly version, such as desktop backgrounds with the picture and calendar combined into one. I, personally, would find that version more useful.
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Creator Reply: |
In regards to the models. Yes they are real woman, (Attractive woman.) They are paid models, but not Super Models. They are as seen in the samples. If that is what typical real girls look like in anybody’s neighborhood. – I want to move there. (Enough Said.)
In regards to calendar format.
The format for this calendar was chosen to provide users with nice prints from a typical bubble jet printer, as well as a large informational calendar. Placing calendar and print on the same 8.5 x11 or 11 x 8.5 would have provided a much smaller picture and calendar and was deemed by our focus group to be less desirable. After all, this is Calendar & “Print Set.” For those who wish to display both Calendar and Print at the same time as a background on their desktop. It takes less than 1 minute to copy both pages and place them on 17 x 11 bitmap using windows MS paint. This allows the user to start with a large full size photo of each subject. Starting big has the advantage of allowing the user to adjust the size down to fit their computer screen. In most cases shrinking the image by up to 50%. (I reduced my copy to 58% of original size, yet it still fills my 23” wide screen monitor nicely. Thus for those looking for a more digital friendly version this critic speaks about in this review, it is quick matter for the user to create a custom one using MS Paint.
Generally I personally use my calendar as a pdf icon on my desktop, opening it as needed, and placing notes where desired. I save the pictures and either print them out for my game room and/or use them as a screen saver without the calendar portion attached. How people use this calendar and print is up to them, but with the format we chose, we have given our customers the best options to maximize the quality of prints and usability of the Calendar, and the flexibility needed to display this calendar many ways. (Essentially the best of all worlds.)
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This is a fun and tasteful presentation of 'classic' fantasy artwork, provided you do not expect female adventurers to sally forth in appropriate clothing! It's a delightful series of posed photos of ladies blended with fantasy imagery - castles, creatures, wild country - and generally brandishing assorted weaponry.
There are occasional technical defects in edge blending of superimposed images; but I really only have 2 gripes. Firstly, I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't go adventuring dressed like that and, secondly, where are all the tasty male adventurers?
At least the lady in the image titled 'Thou Shall Not Pass' has a decent chain shirt, but even she would be advised to wear a suitable padded arming coat underneath it.
You might not want your grannie or the vicar to catch you with this, but it is nicely-presented and would only offend those who seek to be offended; if you admire the female form and like fantasy subjects, enjoy!
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I found this product useful for its rare collection of varied urban setting floor plans.
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This was exactly what I was looking for. The map was already laid out and easy to use. No unneeded additions.
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If you're still looking for a 2011 calendar full of photos of fantasy women, you can't much go wrong here. The photos are tasteful and sexy, and designed for a home printer. One note, some of the digitally enhanced backgrounds have an odd repeating line. It probably won't make a difference for most printers, but maybe we can hope for an update from the publisher.
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Creator Reply: |
Thank you for the feedback. Only 3 pictures in this Calendar actually use a digitally enhanced background. The rest were just shot at exotic locations. The three digitally enhanced backgrounds are each unique. They all printed out flawlessly on the two test printers we tried. Bubble Jet and Laser. I am unable to locate the flaw mentioned by this reviewer in the prints or in the jpegs. If the reveiwer can contact me with more specific information, I might be able to find it and correct it. Greendragon@dunjon.com (SSD supports its products, and will do updates as required to insure are customers get a quality product.) At this point I am thinking the reoccuring flaw may be in the user's printer or perhaps the file was somehow slightly corrupted during or after upload/download. (Especially looking at the way the flash preview sometimes presents this Calendar.) We will upload a new one this afternoon and hopefully that will fix the problem. |
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This is supplement is huge! The kind of thing most other game companies might charge $15 - $30 for in eBook format. Don’t let the cover art or low price fool you, there is lot more to the Moon Dragon Inn that meets the casual eye. In fact, there is so much content I have decided to give both a brief review for those who want only the quick dope, and a full review for those who want all the details.
The brief review is simply this: A fully realized, highly detailed, DM friendly Inn with a large cast of characters and 15 unique dungeon adventures, and lots of added perks that make it well worth the money. Compatible with almost any role-playing system a must have supplement for any serious DM. After buying my core books (DMG, Players Manual and Monster Manuals) I would personally buy this supplement.
Okay, now the full review. There are four major parts this book. I will discus the strengths and weaknesses of each part in turn. First, there are the maps. Included with this set is a nice full color regional map and detailed B&W replacement city section map for those who own the city of Volondor map set. (High lighting recently modifications made to the inn.) Neither are germane to this review since the inn is designed to be used as a standalone supplement or incorporated into any campaign world. The maps of Inn and dungeon area are full color, miniature scale, they provide great ambience, and clearly show important details to characters navigating the area. (Such as Hex or Square grids outlines, door bolts, window shutters, torches, etc.) These maps are not as good as some higher quality dungeon tile map sets I have seen. Yet, they still look nice to look at, and are designed to print quickly without wasting nearly as much ink. They print out clearly and look nice when taped to some poster board. Given that this is not a one or two room dungeon tiles set, but a compete 22 room Inn with a huge dungeon area, I need to give this set a grade of “A” for the 40 detailed maps that were included. (It should be noted, that the designers provided both square and hex gird maps for the dungeon area. (A nice plus for 4.0 players.)
The second major part of this supplement are the 15 Dungeons. The Moon Dragon Inn has a wine cellar known to the owner in the basement, but it also contains about dozen secret rooms. (Where anything goes.) Various creatures tunnel in through the basement walls, or sneak/break in through the root cellar doors. Monsters include things like dire rats, bears, zombies, ogres, giants, vampires, demons and ghosts. (Things typically found in most monster manuals.) Special dire/corrupted powers can be randomly given to creatures to spice things up for adventurers. (Such as breath weapons, summing abilities, and death gazes.) The 15 dungeons seem suitable for 1st to about 12th level characters depending on the size of the party, the equipment they have, and game system being used. Each dungeon features a different type of monster class with random variations. Each dungeon offers unique treasure, and traps. (A detailed schematic of 6 different random traps are included for use with each trapped door, another nice touch.) Each mission begins with plausible narration, that usually ends with owner named Bear Killer, exclaiming, “I am a bartender, not a bouncer, won’t somebody rid me of these unwelcome guests,” or words to the effect. Once adventurers enter the dungeon, everything is pretty straight forward, and basically hack and slash. I have run two parties through two dungeons so far. One through the ogre dungeon, and one through the giant dungeon, both needed to rest a few times before completing the entire dungeon. (I will admit the party sizes I guided through these dungeons only consisted of about 5 players each. (Dungeons seem designed for 8 characters.) Once they decided to hire a NPC or two from the Inn above things went more smoothly for them.) Each game group took on average five sessions, (Each session lasting about 4 hours) so figure each dungeon is roughly 20 hours of play. I would guess there is roughly between 200-300 hours worth of “dungeon play” in the supplement. (Not bad considering the price of this supplement.) The only drawback I can see to these dungeons, is that it would not be wise to run the same players through it multiple times in succession. Yes, the traps change, the treasure in chests change, and the monsters change. (Fighting ogres, is not the same as fighting ghosts or ninjas) However, the walls don’t change, and it wise to give players time to forget the terrain and do something else in between Moon Dragon Inn dungeon excursions. As far as terrain goes this dungeon/wine cellar is fairly interesting. Not only are the ceiling high, (20 or 25 feet.) but there are lots of interesting ways to run different monsters in them. My giants hurled beer barrels like boulders into characters. Some of my ogres hid in beer vats. (Other were found drunk off their butt near a case of empty bottles.) There are several sets of stairs and even a long hallway filled with water for character to navigate. I followed the instruction that came with the set to hide unseen areas using cardstock and slowly pulled them away as adventures explored new areas. (This worked really well for me and seemed fairly realistic.) As far as the quality of treasure, difficulty of monsters and/or traps that is pretty subjective manner from DM to DM, let alone game system to game system. Overall I think SSD more or less found a happy middle ground and I have to give them a B for dungeon design.
The third part of supplement of interest are the NPCs. Here this supplement does fall something short of the industry standard when it comes to character & cover art.
The character art is very cartoon like. Some do rise to level of a good Disney style cartoon, but some do not. (I give this module a C for art.) The second thing that might be a problem for some people are the character attributes. As with any generic stats for characters there is certain amount of ambiguity. SSD tackles this problems two ways. First, by providing descriptive adjectives to describe attributes. For example a character might have “feeble strength, “remarkable” intelligence, and “amazing” dexterity. This works in relative terms for all game systems, but does not provide a concrete number for DMs to crunch. To provide a number base that any DM can work with, SSD includes a small number notation after each adjective for systems that have starting attributes in the 1-20 range. (3-18 for most D&D systems) Since it is based on 1-20, the numbers tend to be a bit on the high side for D&D, especially for old school DMs who like to see average stats of characters around 12. (Such as myself.) However, I found the numbers easy enough to modify by simply subtracting 4 from each number as they are given. Since they made the effort to present numbers attributes in two ways, I think it is only fair I give them a B for attributes. (After all, this is a generic supplement for use with D&D or GURPS, or any other RPG system.) The third part of character sheet, and the most important part according to the author are the personalities of the characters. Here, they did a really good job as far as I am concerned. For each character they provide, likes, dislikes, typical sayings, social standing and wealth. For those who don’t like the character picture, SSD offers a short but comprehensive narrative description of each character. The personal history of characters varies from the stereo typical to the interesting and unusual. (Some serious strange, if not deranged backgrounds are also included.) These backgrounds give the DM a good sense of the character personality and his or her motivations without giving the reader to much fluff to remember. One of the nice things about these characters is that they have interpersonal relationships with each other, this allows for some interesting role-playing opportunities for both the DM and his/her players. Some NPCs will adventure with players, some will hire adventures, some might try to seduce a character, and others might try to rob them. (All the things you might expect at an inn of this size and scope.) For this portion of the character sheets I would have to give SSD an “A.” The patrons of the inn are primarily humans and fighters, but there is a good mix of all classes and races with the exception gnomes. (No gnomes?) Oddly, as a special NPC they do include is something they call a “Gnomish Music Making Machine.” (Perhaps haunted by a Gnome?) Overall, for the character sheets (despite the artwork) I would say SSD deserves a firm “B.”
The fourth aspect of this supplement is really all about the ambience. The Moon Dragon Inn is not just some empty map set, with a few NPC and hack and slash dungeon below. It is living, breathing, smoking hot place of excitement and adventurer. To insure this, the publisher includes 20 interesting random events. These include things like drinking, arm wrestling, and beauty contests. Occasionally an Amazonian fight may breakout, or as in one event, “a mouse, being chased by a cat, being chased being chased by a dog, being chased by bear may disrupt the bar and force some characters into action. There are also 100 random city/inn events that include things like a zombie army attack, a hurricane, a dragon attack, and a variety of other interesting situations that might impact the inn or its patrons. There is always something to do with 100 non-combat quests that include things like negotiating trade agreements, promoting a beauty contest, unionizing labor, retrieving rare animals or libations for the Inn. Add to this, a menu with strange and exotic foods and drinks. (Some magical.) Tabletop dancers. (Strippers) Bards with actual songs to sing, or to give characters clues to various dungeons. (Plus a variety of riddles NPCs might ask adventurers to test their wit.) Then include sing-a-longs for camaraderie, a dance floor with a magical piano, several private rooms, (Room inventory sheets included, another nice touch.) two hot tubs and a swimming pool and you have all the ingredients any DM should need for a rip-roaring good time. I can see myself using this supplement for years to come. It is the Shady Dragon Inn (Classic TSR module) on steroids! As far as ambience is concerned, this module deserves an unqualified “A+.”
There are a couple more things I should mention. The writer of this book states he has been a DM for 30 years. As an extra touch he offers advice on how to lure others away from their WoW like games, and into a true role-playing environment such as D&D. Whether you agree with his opinions regarding player recruitment, retention, and role-playing or not, it is probably worth the read. And also, as final unexpected note. (One that I have never seen in any role-playing modules before.) SSD includes a list of easy to prepare game night recipes. (Based on the fantasy menu of the Moon Dragon Inn.) I tried the 5 pound bacon cheese burger (sliced into six sections like a pie) one game night, and literally wowed my players. Obviously, not why a bought this supplement, but diffidently a positive perk.
In summation, I have given this supplement a couple of As, and a couple of Bs in various categories. Some might grade things lower, but I call them as “I” see them. Each one of the four sections mentioned above might easily be sold by another game company for $7.50 each. This ebook brings them all together in one nice neat package with perks for an amazing low price $7.50, thus for overall value I must give this eBook a “A+” I highly recommend this supplement to any DM seeking to improve his or her role-playing game, and to any DM who wants to have over a dozen quick and easy dungeons to run. This Inn and its dungeons are destined to become an all time classic with me and my gamers. Obviously we are enjoying it a lot, and think gamers like us might as well, hence I am writing and posting this review. Thanks for reading it.
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A very large and versatile old school map set at a reasonable price. When I say old school, I don’t mean the basic blue & white square grid copier unfriendly maps like TSR once made. Comparing SSD maps to those maps would be like comparing a 1965 Ford Thunderbird with the Ford Model T. They are both old school, but each is in its own league. To give a typical example of the difference. Back in the day, secret doors were often denoted as a line or rectangle with an “S,” going through. SSD takes black & white mapping detail to whole new level where truly every pixel matters. A secret door that is 4” thick is depicted by a 1 pixel thick line, having only one dot on the side of the door that is not secret. The secret side of the door appears only as a flat line. A dot (door knob) on both sides of the door indicated a normal door. Two dots indicate a door that is locked, three dots double/heavily locked. A box around a doorknob indicates door is trapped, and doors that are locked and barred show deadbolts. SSD also includes such small details as secret compartments in walls hiding levers for traps, torches on walls, and everything an exploring party might typically see, such as chairs, beds, chests, stoves, stairs, statues etc… (As well things they might not see such as elaborate traps.) All maps used standardized symbols, so it well worth the time it takes to learn the legend/dungeon key. Most symbols are user intuitive, but minor details (like with locks) are somewhat encoded using pixel level details. The second important aspect I noticed about these maps was the vast diversity and purpose of each map. From simple bear caves to impregnable fortresses to mad wizards mazes and everything in between. I am forced to agree with the previous featured critic that they are “All fairly well thought out.” A few interesting places I noted in passing include a serious old school (Think cover of D&D v1 player manual) orc lair with a giant talking statue. A fortress built upon a volcano with vents to unleash lava upon attackers. (Think Fire & Ice.) A huge underground Dwarven complex. (Think Tolkien’s mines of Moria). A temple/lair tunneled out to look like a giant spider, with a huge spider statue in the center of it. (Perfect for a Drow/Loth adventure.) Also I liked the well of souls, the temple of time, and a mega vault capable of defending itself against even the most powerful/determined thieves/monsters. Beyond these, there is a variety of other interesting places to numerous to mention in the space of this review. Suffice it to say, just about anywhere you can imagine going this map set has a complete dungeon map ready and waiting for you. This brings me to third point I should make about his map set. All the dungeons, all the castles, all the temples have their location denoted on the DM’s regional map. (Player’s map does not show dungeons or small/hidden cities.) Individually these dungeons are nice, but together, by sheer number and scope, they create one of the largest campaign worlds I have ever seen. (Perhaps as big or bigger than the “World of GreyHawk” or “Forgotten Realms.” Remember we are talking dozens of castles, hence dozen of kingdoms, and about 1,000,000 square mile regional map. Not just names or dots on a map, but concrete structures with detailed floor-plans of their own. The final thing I would like to note about this collection of maps is that the PDF file is well book-marked so it is easy to navigate and permission is given to add notes, (Monsters, treasure, and trap notes) directly to the PDF file so it makes running a dungeon from my laptop a breeze. The detailed B&W maps appear to be saved as two color bitmaps allowing the maps to be printed in their original format so every pixel is crisp and easy to see. (I also like the way the PDF is setup so I can place sticky notes for monsters, treasure and traps wherever I like.) The color regional map is a jpeg and somewhat less sharp, but still a nice poster size wall hanging, and useful navigational tool. (It clearly shows features as detailed as roads, bridge crossings, and waterfalls.) I would recommend this product to anyone looking to build a huge campaign world. Or to any DM who wants to have a vast assortment of castles and dungeon maps at their command. This set has “years” worth of dungeons and cities to explore and is well worth its price tag when compared to like quality products
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This is a very simple product. It's maps. And they're fairly well thought-out.
I don't notice any glaring issues, however, I should note that these maps are extremely retro-styled. I don't mind it, but if you're used to fancy pants stuff, this may not be your cup of tea.
The only gripe: .jpg's get more and more lossy the more you save 'em, and it's obvious on the colored world maps.
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Creator Reply: |
As mentioned in description these are old school maps. Do view them for yourself to see if they are right for you. SSD is now making much higher quality maps, hence we are offering some of are older work in this "value" pack, (See Moon Dragon Inn for examples of our newer maps.)
The B&W detailed dungeon/castle maps were inserted into PDF as 2 color bitmaps. (So they are as crisp as possible for this format/medium.) In contrast, the color regional maps were converted "once" from a digitally remastered bitmaps into a JPEG and should print out as you see them in the preview. What this reviewer refers to as multiple over saves of JPG is actually a result of the remastering process. (This map was enlarged to 4 times its original size.)
“Everything” was redrawn at bitmap level with the exception of some of the mountain lines. Mountains were edited, but many of the thicker lines and were allowed to stay, hence giving the impression of multiple saves. Since mountains are gray and have shadows this was not considered an issue, and it does not distract from either the detail or ambience of the regional maps. All roads, cities, dungeons, temples, rivers, waterfalls, and labeling text, does printout neatly and clearly. This regional map does look very nice, and is very functionally, at least according to the two dozen players who use it in my games. Enough said.
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I feel the value overall of this product far exceeded its measly price. I found the MDI to be very detailed, both from an operational overview as well as an expertly detailed map set. The addition of the basement in both hex grid as well as square grid was a nice touch, even though I personally detest square grid. Although the maps were created in color and can be printed that way, they look just fine when printed in black-and-white (I hate spending a ton of money on colored ink). The addition of so many NPC's (both major and minor) makes it very easy to plan, or run off the cuff, a great game. I found the generous assortment of adventure seeds, random happenings at the Inn and in town, puzzles and songs/legends to be a great timesaver for a DM's overly harried brain. I did notice several instances where other items from SSD are referenced in the form of an advertisement. Contrary to television ads, and when considering the quality of front of me, I found my interest piqued -- I will look closer at their other products. The inclusion of the "game night recipes" hit me out of left field, I may have to try some of these -- even though pizza and Mountain Dew will always be the iconic stand by :) As a gamer/player/DM for over 30 years I can easily integrate this product into any campaign I run, no matter the game system (a rarity even among "generic" came products). The author apologizes for the "cartoonish" style of the pictures -- frankly I could care less about the artwork, no character portrait in any game I've ever run has matched the vision in my head.
I would have to say this is without a doubt the best product I've purchased from RPGnow. Excellent value for my money. Five stars!
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Riddle me this: have you ever been in a situation where you want to test your PCs with a brain-teaser, only to find that you can’t think of a good one? Ideally, this is a problem you’d run into when designing your adventure, rather than panicking right at the game table as you realize you’re stumped to come up with a stumper. Still, it’s a bit worrisome to think that – notwithstanding the old classics – you can’t think of a riddle.
That’s where Stainless Steel Dragon comes in, with 101 Fantasy Riddles. The title alone should tell you exactly what to expect, as it contains exactly the listed number of fantasy-based riddles. Of course, by “fantasy riddles” it means that it doesn’t have anything dealing with modern objects or ideas – these are all things that people in a medieval world (whether fantasy or not) would likely have come up with.
The book’s format is fairly standard. After the cover, there’s no other artwork to be found here, save for the company logo on the credits page. The table of contents lists the various riddles found per page, though it lists them by their subject, which usually gives away the answer as well – be sure not to let players peruse the book.
You’ll actually find all of the riddles here listed twice. The book first prints them all with their answers listed immediately afterwards, and then reprints them all again without the answer, instead having an answer key at the back of the book. This struck me as somewhat unnecessary, since it probably would have made more sense just to list them all without an answer and then refer to the key at the end, but I suppose there’s no harm in doing it both ways here.
Presumably many of these riddles are original; I say presumably because a significant number of them are tagged with the notation “Classic Riddle of unknown origin,” though I’d only ever heard of a few of these previously. Still, it underlines a certain aspect of the book: these all deal with fairly mundane concepts. By that I mean, don’t expect anything particularly dealing with dragons or orcs or anything particular to fantasy – these are “one size fits all” for any sort of rustic campaign, and don’t get into particulars. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you want a riddle based around the lunar cycles of your campaign world’s three moons, you’re out of luck here.
Ultimately, this book does exactly what it promises, and nothing more: it delivers 101 riddles that would conceivably be found in a fantasy world. Not difficult, none of them are exactly easy either, which will probably make them exactly what you need them to be, though any tweaking for specificity will have to be done on your own. Still, it fulfills the niche it sets out to.
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Creator Reply: |
A fair review. Yes designed so game masters don't need to look up riddles. (If they so choose.) Yes there is exactly 101 riddles as the title suggests. (What would someone say if I offered any more or any less?) Most of the riddles are original, but yes a few are classics. (To those who already know them.) RPG monsters were not included in this volume, maybe volume II. I will think about it for the sequel. (Some can be pretty obscure and not suitable to character knowledge, even if the player knows the answer.) There are a few that related to wizards, kings, castles, drawbridges and the like. All have a serious medieval flavor to them that any fantasy character (If not their players) might be able to answer. That is what I was going for. Nuff’ said. |
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