Starr the Insane's Books > Book reviews by Starr the Insane

Nice Dice!

Posted : 1 year, 9 months ago on 2 February 2007 09:30 (A review of Mage the Awakening Dice (Mage))

It's a toss-up whether I like these or the Promethean dice better. The Mage dice are a deep swirling royal blue with gold and white numbers. The set of ten 10-sided dice come in a blue bag with the Mage logo printed in white on the front. It's a great little set to get you in the mood for Mage. And you can never have too many sets of dice, right?

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D&D at Sea!

Posted : 1 year, 9 months ago on 2 February 2007 03:32 (A review of Stormwrack: Mastering the Perils of Wind and Wave (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying, E)

This book is a wonderful supplement to any D&D collection. For gamers wishing to take their party on a seafaring adventure, this book is essential. Chapter 1 cites marine terrain, weather patterns and modifiers, various aquatic locations, and rules on sailing and maneuvering ships for travel and battle. Excellent help when deciding the length and perils of the journey ahead.
Chapter 2 is all about races. Four new races are introduced in this book; the Aventi, the Aquatic elf, the Hadozee (a race of ocean-loving apes), and my very favorite new race so far, the Darfellan (think "orca people"). Other races are variations on the standard D&D races.
Chapter 3 gives new class options, and 7 prestige classes like the Leviathan Hunter or Stormcaster. Chapters 4 and 6 are all new feats, skills, spells and magic items.
Chapter 5 gives details on different ships and equipment one might use.
Chapter 7 is 35 pages of new monsters. The Coral Golem alone is worth it! Plus the Hippocampus, Dire Eel, Seawolf, Caller from the Deeps, and a CR13 Scyllan (featured on the cover illustration).
The last chapter gives a few locales to test out the new rules (encounter info is listed in the Appendix).

If you love pirate movies, Greek mythology, or just always wanted to have underwater adventures, this book will bring all those awesome elements straight to your gaming table.

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Starter Dice

Posted : 1 year, 9 months ago on 29 January 2007 11:27 (A review of Dungeons & Dragons Dice with Cloth Dice Bag (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory))

This dice are colorful yet plain, handy yet often unlucky. They are great starter dice for someone getting into the gaming scene (the color-coded dice help you find the one with the right number of sides), but players who are quite familiar with the shape of various sizes of dice will want to choose their own personal set soon. Good companies for this are Crystal Caste (for actual stone dice!) or Chessex (for a wide variety of colorful (matching) sets.

We purchased several set of these dice when they went on sale at the bookstore. The original price is pretty steep considering there are some really fancy sets that only cost you $6.

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