Pathfinder Map Pack: "Ruined Village" [RPG]

I’ve used the Ruined Village Map Pack in a couple of scenarios now.  I think it offers a nice array of detailed locations that all fit on the theme of an abandoned village.  There’s a nice little cemetery (I’m surprised Paizo hasn’t made flip-mats for graveyards, considering how often adventurers go to them), a weed-choked fountain, and several houses and buildings of various sizes with broken furniture, cracked flooring, and debris everywhere.  It’s definitely much more interesting and evocative than someone could draw with a marker.  Most of the tiles could fit together to make one large village, with the exception being the two broken bridge spans crossing a river.  I can envision a lot of uses for this Map Pack: a campsite the PCs come across just at sunset, an old hermit’s hut, a bandit hideout, a ghost-infested ruin, or even just an ordinary village that has fallen on (really) hard times.  Its versatility and design quality makes it a solid product worth purchasing.

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: "Inner Sea World Guide" [RPG]

To put it simply, the Inner Sea World Guide is *the* setting book for Pathfinder.  There are several other books (softcovers) that provide more insight into particular areas, but this is the book that introduces the whole shebang.  Weighing in at 318 pages, it provides an overview of everything that makes up Pathfinder's official campaign setting: the Inner Sea region of the planet Golarion.  There are entries on each of the core races and human ethnicities, overviews of each of the nations of the region, a chapter on gods and religion, miscellaneous information like holidays and languages, an introduction to some major organisations that PCs might belong to (or fight against), player-facing material like new equipment and prestige classes, and finally a handful of new monsters for the GM. In short, there is a *lot* of information in the book and I've come to rely on it heavily.

In terms of overall production quality, a reader won't be disappointed.  It's attractively laid out, with tons of maps, artwork (some of it recycled from earlier Paizo products), sidebars, etc.  It's clear that a lot of love and attention to detail went into the book, which makes sense as it's one of the premier products in the Pathfinder line.

An Introduction (4 pages) kicks things off.  One page is a map of the entire Inner Sea region.  The theme of the setting is encapsulated nicely: against all prophecies, the God of Humanity, Aroden, has died suddenly, leading to a world "where nothing is foretold, and anything can happen."  From another perspective, that's really what Golarion is: a kitchen-sink setting where no matter what kind of fantasy game-play your group wants, it can find a place for it--whether it's gothic tales of horror, swashbuckling tales of pirates, barbarians with laser-swords, steampunk gunslingers, or more traditional elves and wizards.  The sum really is greater than the parts, and somehow it all works.  The entire setting has a surprisingly rich and detailed history, which helps to tie everything together into a more coherent whole.  The Introduction also contains a really nice in-game summary of the Pathfinder Society and a short sidebar explaining how the Inner Sea World Guide has expanded upon and updated the two previous overviews of the setting (the Gazetteer and Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, respectively).

Chapter 1 is Races (22 pages).  It starts with a *very* brief overview (a sentence or two each) of where some of the uncommon humanoid races (like tieflings or kobolds) fit into the Inner Sea before devoting a single-page to each of the human ethnicities of Golarion (many with sensitively-handled analogues to real world cultures) and then the other core races like elves, dwarves, etc..  I'm not necessarily a fan of this way of handling things, as it gives the appearance that only humans have different ethnicities while all the other core races are homogeneous.  Still, the chapter does succeed in adding a ton of Golarion-specific lore that is absent from the setting-neutral Core Rulebook.

Chapter 2, "The Inner Sea" (184 pages) is clearly the heart (and, by page-count, a full half) of the book.  It starts by explaining that the Inner Sea consists of the continents of Avistan and (northern) Garund, explaining that the planet of Golarion contains several other continents that are outside the scope of the book.  There's a detailed timeline of the setting's in-game history, which makes for interesting reading once some additional context is provided.  The bulk of the chapter consists of four-page entries on each of the major countries/regions of the Inner Sea.  Each entry starts with a sidebar giving basic information (like notable settlements, rulers, population, etc.) and is then sub-divided by topics: history, government, and a gazetteer of notable locations.  There are 41 of these entries in alphabetical order, so it's pretty hard to cover them adequately in a review like this.  I think the best thing to do is repeat my earlier point that there's a place for almost everything somewhere: revolutionary America has an analogue in Andoran, revolutionary France is Galt, Osiron is ancient Egypt, etc.  But there are also some very original countries, like Razmiran (a theocracy ruled by a con-man), Rahadoum (a country that has turned against the gods and where worship is illegal), the Worldwound (a wasteland devastated by the presence of an open portal to demonic planes), the Mana Wastes (where magic doesn't work, and technology has stepped in), and so much more.  If nothing else, each entry serves as a nice overview to give the area some basic flavour, and then a GM who really wants more detail can look for the matching softcover campaign setting line book for more depth.  I was particularly intrigued by the eight page "Beyond the Inner Sea" section, which is more detailed than I would have thought (and definitely worth expanding someday, Paizo!).

Chapter 3, "Religion" (32 pages), contains a half-page introduction to each of the "Core 20" deities of the setting.  Other gods get a paragraph or two, but there's also space devoted to archdevils, demon lords, elemental lords, dead gods, and philosophies.  It's enough to get started, though serious players and GMs will likely want more detailed information.  In terms of game-play mechanics, two new clerical domains (Scalykind and Void) are introduced here.

Chapter 4, "Life" is sadly just ten pages long.  This is the chapter that covers the calendar, holidays and festivals, languages, weather and climate, and distinctive flora and fauna, among other subjects.  There are some nice samples of things that make Golarion distinctive, but it would be good to someday have an "Inner Sea Almanac" that expanded on the little things that don't seem exciting but help add a major degree of verisimilitude to the setting.

Chapter 5, "Factions" (14 pages) provides a two-page introduction to five different organisations: the Aspis Consortium (an unprincipled group of colonialists & merchants), the Eagle Knights (anti-slavery freedom-fighters), the Hellknights (extremely strict "law and order" types), the Pathfinder Society (explorers and treasure-hunters), and the Red Mantis (assassins).  Several lesser groups also get a one-paragraph overview.  Overall, the chapter again serves nicely as a brief introduction, though more detailed information on each of the groups is available elsewhere.

Chapter 6, "Adventuring" (30 pages) is for the players.  It starts with suggestions on where in the Inner Sea various classes might hail from. It then introduces four new prestige classes: the Harrower (a cool fortune-teller with an interesting suite of special abilities), the Hellknight (an armored juggernaut), the Low Templar (a sort of cowardly knight; it's hard to envision this one appealing widely), and the Red Mantis Assassin (maybe more for GMs than players, but with some eye-raising abilities).  The chapter introduces several new feats; most of them are forgettable but a couple (like Rapid Reload and Fey Foundling) have become crucial to some builds and are, frankly, probably overpowered.  The chapter provides updated rules for several pieces of equipment introduced in earlier adventure paths, including goblin weapons like dogslicers, Shoanti weapons like the Earth breaker, and more.  It also briefly covers firearms, which are suitably rare and problematic (until someone plays a Gunslinger).  Finally, there are some new spells (the most famous of which is infernal healing) and magic items (many of which are essential to parts of the campaign setting, like the final blades for Galt, the sun orchid elixir for Thuvia, and wardstones for the Worldwound).  On the whole, I don't think buying the book purely for the "crunch" would be a good idea; the material in this chapter is only a supplement to what's essentially a "flavour/fluff" book.

Chapter 7, "Monsters" (14 pages) starts off with a nice overview of the role that various traditional groups of monsters (like dragons, trolls, ogres, etc.) play in Golarion.  It then goes on to introduce seven new monsters, each with a 1-page Bestiary-style entry.  Potential players will be interested to see that two of them, Gillmen and Strix, are given rules to make them playable races.  Rise of the Runelords GMs may be interested to see full stats for the Sandpoint Devil.

As I write this review, Pathfinder Second Edition is on the horizon and Paizo has said they plan to update the official setting with the "results" of all previous adventure paths.  For now, however, the Inner Sea World Guide is the best one-stop resource to get started on anything involving the Inner Sea.  Lots of books have more on a single given topic, but no book has so much on so many different topics when it comes to the Inner Sea.

Captain Atom (DC, 1987-1991) # 51-57 [COMICS]

Here we go, the final issues of Captain Atom!  This series has never been reprinted, so search out those dollar bins (or, my favourite thing in the world, 25 cent bins) to assemble your own set.  Because you can't have mine!

A well-composed, intriguing cover starts off Issue # 51.  We once again have a different creative team, and it tells a tale where Captain Atom has only a minor part.  Instead, the story revolves around "Pops", a new character with strange powers that he tries to suppress until he's witness to a murder and the kidnapping of his son by gang violence.  It's a good story.  The letters page has a nice goodbye from Weisman and Bates.  I know a series can't always end just because the original creative team has finished, but sometimes I think it's a classy thing for low-to-mid ranking titles to do.

Issue # 52 brings in a different writer, Dan Raspler, for a frankly kinda goofy tale about an alien left over on Earth from the big Invasion! crossover.  The alien, a Dominator, has been "helping" a think-thank but actually using it for a nefarious drug-dealing scheme.  It's original, I 've gotta give it that, but original doesn't always mean good.

The cover art has been pretty good the last few issues, including Issue # 53, even with different writers.  It's hard to beat "Attack of the Zombie Dolphins!" as a cover line, guest-starring Aquaman.  It's a fun, standalone story with a really fun scene involving a battle against a ginormous zombie whale.  Not exactly high-brow literature, but comics don't have to be everything all the time.

Issue # 54 is the series' swan-song (a phrase the origin of which dates back to Plato's Socratic dialogues, says the learned listener of a podcast on philosophy).  It's the first in a four-issue arc called "The Quantum Quest" written by John Ostrander.  The cover art gets ugly again, however.  You might recall the concept in DC comics from this period that different super heroes were actually "elementals"?  Swamp Thing was the plant elemental, Red Tornado the air elemental, Firestorm the fire elemental, etc., with Captain Atom being the "quantum elemental."  This issue dives into that idea as the Phantom Stranger guest stars to lead Captain Atom to meet Rasputin (!), but a battle against an evil villain named "Shadow Storm" gets C.A. blasted into the quantum zone.  He can create and recreate the quantum zone to his wishes, and so makes one where Nathaniel Adam was never convicted of treason and lives happily with his wife and kids.  It's surprisingly good.

Power  is addictive, as C.A. finds in Issue # 55.  With the ability to snap his fingers and retroactively change any unhappy moment in his new life, he more and more reduces his loved ones into mindless automatons.  And every time he changes reality, feeds a dark doppelganger.  Two issues in a row with my note "surprisingly good" scrawled on the backing board.  Hmm!

Captain Atom suffers from severe abdominal abnormalities according to the cover art to Issue # 56.  But worse, he has to fight his evil doppelganger in his quantum world while in the "real" world, Shadow Storm wreaks havoc.  I haven't mentioned that the "real" Rasputin is, for some reason, also in C.A.'s quantum-verse.  Atom tells Rasputin of his family's history, and it's surprisingly dark, involving a father abandoning his family, a mother who's a drunk, and a car-wreck in which his sister was killed.  Ironic that the first real glimpse of Adam's background comes near the very end of his run.  But it's done well here.

It all comes to an end in Issue # 57, which is (unfortunately) a "War of the Gods" crossover issue.  It's a largely incoherent mess that starts with several 1-page pin-ups.  Captain Atom returns to the "real" world and defeats Shadow Storm, the most cliched villain around.  Something else vague and incoherent happens, and C.A. flies off to his (infamously stupid) non-fate in Armageddon 2001 # 2.  It's a really poor, disappointing ending, and makes me think the series should have just ended at # 50 after all.

Starfinder Society Faction Pin: "Dataphiles" [RPG]

This is "Starfinder Society Faction Pin 2 of 5" according to the packaging, and comes with the slogan "Dataphiles: Knowledge is Power."  I like the design of this one: circuitry creating a vaguely humanoid outline.  Like the others, it seems to be high-quality metal ("colored enamel on Black Nickel antique plating" according to the manufacturer) and the butterfly clasp will keep it from falling off one's shirt.  There's not really much else to say about it, but I'm happy to display it when running my Stephen Hawking-inspired Dataphiles PC, Professor Reivax Kipe.

Starfinder Society Faction Pin: Second Seekers [RPG]

Currently, slotting this little pin in the promotional boon slot gives a Starfinder Society PC a once per session bonus to a skill check.  I prefer the shirt d20 reroll, but I still prop this up for my self-medicating Solarian.  This butterfly-clasp pin has the logo of the Starfinder Society Second Seekers faction on what the manufacturer calls "colored enamel on Antique Silver plating."  I don't know what that means, honestly.  I'm also frankly baffled by what the logo is supposed to represent; it's kind of a curved thing floating under a square-thing with a slot in it?  Really, I have no idea, though that's not the pin manufacturer's fault.  The back of the packaging says "Second Seekers: A New Way Forward" and labels this Starfinder Society Faction Pin 4 of 5.  It seems like a quality product.

Pathfinder Tales: "Pirate's Honor" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

The "pirates" sub-genre of fantasy fiction isn't everyone's favourite, and it wasn't mine going into Pirate's Honor.  But consider me converted!  Chris Jackson writes one of the very best Pathfinder Tales novels I've read yet, and he does it by establishing a fully-characterised core crew, writing breathtaking action scenes, and showing off hard-earned nautical knowledge to add a dash of realism to the fantastic.  I learned a lot about an aspect of Golarion (its shipping lanes, sea battles, and port towns) that I never paid much attention to before, and I can see the appeal of a campaign involving those aspects of the setting.  This is definitely one to seek out.

SPOILERS

The novel is centered around the exploits of a pirate ship named the Stargazer.  Although its crew are definitely pirates and criminals, they're more of the roguish-scoundrel types than the bloodthirsty "walk the plank" type.  The main crew members are well-drawn and memorable.  Crew members include an inventive gnome quartermaster, a (more traditional) surly orc bosun, and a suspicious new elf first mate.  The core relationship is between Captain Torius, a rakish human, and his navigator/astrologer, a "lunar naga" named Celeste.  A major subplot running throughout the book is the ebb and flow of the pair's relationship, full of love, jealousy, mistrust, and (due the narcotic effects of naga venom) addiction!  It sounds weird, but trust me, it works.

Pirate's Honor isn't just a big episode of The Love Boat, however.  The action scenes are big, bloody, and page-turning exciting, whether they take place on sea or land.  The main plot involves the crew of the Stargazer executing a complicated ruse in order to get revenge on a crimelord named Benrahi Ekhan who set them up to get arrested by the authorities.  I admit I was a bit confused on exactly how the plan was supposed to work, but I didn't worry too much about it because the rest was so enjoyable.  The villain is suitably despicable but not one-dimensional.  Jackson paid close attention to the lore of Golarion, and probably added to it significantly with his description of several locales around the Inner Sea.

I definitely want to read more about the crew of the Stargazer.  Pirate's Honor is one of those fantasy novels that exceed the expectations of RPG-fiction, and become strong books in their own right.

Starfinder: Alien Archive [RPG]

The Alien Archive is the first Starfinder "monster book."  It includes  sixty different creatures.  Although GMs would be the natural audience for a book like this, players can get a lot out of it as well because no less than 21 of the creature entries have rules for running them as PCs.  In addition, several of the entries introduce new weapons, armor, or other magical items.  The book is structured pretty much like you would expect, with a short introduction, a whole bunch of creatures in alphabetical order, and then some (very useful and important) appendices.  I'm going to go through each of these sections, but first I want to highlight the overall design and look of the book: it's absolutely gorgeous.  The full-colour artwork is uniformly excellent and fits the "feel" of the Starfinder universe perfectly, the intelligently-designed footers and page borders make it very easy to tell where you are in the book at any moment, and the layout of the creature stat blocks and description makes the text very readable.  Paizo is one of the best in the business at this part of RPG publishing, and their attention and expertise to detail (not to mention investment in quality artwork) shows here to full effect.

The book starts with a two-page introduction that has a couple of different topics.  First, there's an explanation that the aliens given special rules to allow them to be played as PCs have often been scaled back in power from the same aliens when played as NPCs by the GM.  This makes sense from a game-design perspective (because otherwise many of the playable alien races would be overpowered), but it can be somewhat disappointing as a reader to stumble on an alien that seems awesome only to realize that, if you want to play one, it's abilities will be significantly nerfed.  Second, there's a "How to Read a Stat Block" section that explains each line in a creature stat block.  Most of this will be pretty familiar to readers of Pathfinder Bestiaries, with some minor distinctions, like only showing ability score modifiers (not the scores themselves), only showing usable feats (not ones that are "built in" to the statistics), and the disappointing omission of the little one-line description in italics that I used to read out to players when they encountered a new monster.  Another minor difference is that instead of having little symbols that define monsters by environment, the Alien Archive has little symbols that identify them as "Combatants", "Experts" (skillwise), or "Spellcasters".

The core of the book (120 pages), of course, is the creature entries.  Each entry gets a full two-page spread.  The advantage of this is that many entries include multiple stat blocks (such as Space Goblins getting a CR 1/3 "Space Goblin Zaperator" and a CR 2 "Space Goblin Honchohead"), there's room for the aforementioned new items or PC racial traits, and there's a *lot* of description.  This last thing is probably one of my favourite things about the book, as the writers could go into much more depth on each creature than if they just had one-page entries.  The background/description sections are full of flavour and setting lore, and I saw some great adventure hooks buried within some of them.  The obvious drawback of two-page spreads for each entry is that it does limit the overall number of creatures in the book, which is already slim (a topic I'll talk more about below).

As for the creatures themselves, I guess it's not really practical for me to go through all sixty of them.  Some general observations:  1) They struck a reasonable balance between (re)introducing some Pathfinder creatures into the new setting (like Dragons, Drow, Elementals, and Goblins) without turning the book into just an updated Bestiary.  The vast majority of creatures in the book are new.  2) Despite being an "alien" book, most of the creatures are roughly two arm/two leg/one head humanoids.  There are definitely some exceptions, such as my beloved barathu (floating jellyfish-like creatures, one of which I'm running through Dead Suns), skittermanders (six-armed over-helpful little creatures that have become Starfinder's break-out hit), and exotic threats like the tech-devouring "assembly ooze" (cooler in theory than in practice).  3) Even with a relatively small spread of creatures, some entries are pretty unimaginative and fall flat: I'm looking at you Formians (generic ant creatures), Grays (generic mysterious aliens), Mountain eels (eels . . . on mountains!), surnoch (forgettable giant worms), and the Swarm (generic bug monsters).  4) The book somehow manages to handle, incredibly concisely, some entries for creature types that should take up several pages: all of the chromatic dragons, for example, are included into a single two-page spread (through the use of templates), and all four of the basic elemental types and sizes are summarised through similar means in just two pages.  I admire the economy of space, though I worry the templates don't include enough special features to make a white dragon play significantly differently than a blue dragon (for example) or for a water elemental to really seem different than an air elemental.  5)  A few of the creatures are large enough to post a threat to entire starships, and have been given additional stat blocks for starship combat.  6) The creatures are heavily skewed to the low to middle levels of gameplay.  There's only one or two creatures each for CRs of 13 or above.

Appendix 1 weighs in at a hefty 17 pages and provides a GM with instructions for creating custom monsters and NPCs.  There's a nine-step process which includes selecting an ability score array, creature type, special abilities, etc.  The process is designed to be quick and painless, and operates on the premise that what's important from a player-facing perspective is what cool things a creature can do during an encounter rather than whether it has precisely the right amount of skill points or one too many feats.  This was a conscious decision by the Starfinder designers, and is a big break with the D&D 3.5/Pathfinder model which operated under the premise that monsters/NPCs couldn't "cheat" (so a Level 5 Wizard NPC couldn't have more spells than a Level 5 Wizard PC "just because").  The choice has led to criticism from a lot of GMs who prefer the Pathfinder way.  I almost exclusively run pre-made adventures these days so I haven't used the monster/NPC creation rules in the Alien Archive myself.  Perhaps the only problem I've noticed is that monsters and NPCs can seem very "samey" because they're not built organically with real strengths and weaknesses (there's never a Level 6 creature running around with a 10 KAC because it's slow and doesn't wear armor, for example--it'll have a fixed KAC of 18, 19, or 20 depending on which array is chosen).

Appendix 2 (five pages) provides the rules for summoning creatures in Starfinder.  It introduces the Summon Creature spell and the associated tables for what exactly can be summoned for each level of the spell.  One of the differences from Pathfinder is that a spellcaster must decide, ahead of time, which four creatures they're familiar enough with to summon (instead of being able to summon anything on the table).  In addition, there are some alignment and class restrictions on what can be summoned, which is an intelligent limitation.  I personally hate summoned creatures, animal companions, and familiars, so anything that can be done to curb the abuse we see in Pathfinder is welcome as far as I'm concerned.

Appendix 3 (two pages) provides 16 new templates (called "Grafts" here) that can be applied to creatures to change them up a little.  A couple of these are familiar from Pathfinder (like Celestial, fiendish, and Giant), but most of the others are new for Starfinder (like Cybernetic, Synthetic, Miniature, and Two-Headed).

Appendix 4 (7 pages) is the most important of the appendices, as it contains what every GM will need to reference frequently: universe creature rules.  When a stat block says a monster has Blindsense, Grab, or Undead Immunities, they'll need to turn here to figure out exactly what that means in mechanical terms.  Some of these rules will be very familiar to Pathfinder GMs, but there are enough little differences that it's worth reading the entries carefully.

The most commonly heard complaint about the Alien Archive is that it's just too short for its price.  It's $ 39.99 for just 159 pages, while a hardcover Pathfinder Bestiary is 328 pages and a $ 44.99 retail price.  I think the criticism is fair, and I wouldn't blame people for choosing to instead get the $ 9.99 PDF.  Apart from its length/price, however, this is a really strong book full of gorgeous artwork, strong writing, and a good array of various creatures.  It's definitely worth picking up in one format or another.