Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Tommy's Take on The Paper Dead, Kingdom of Graves and Rite NPC Deck

The Rite NPC Deck

The Rite NPC Deck is a PDF file filled with printable NPC headshots with a generic "back" sheet for NPC notes, if you want to stat them out or the like.

Most of the art is good to great, with a heavy emphasis on fantasy (veering heavily into more animalistic types than human types).

49 images are provided, which means you're paying about 12 cents a head shot (approximately), which is more than fair. The downside is that you are more likely having to fit a character to the art, but I personally find that to be a fun challenge.

Very nice product, especially if you don't known an artist or have art skills yourself.


Mythic Menagerie - Kingdom of Graves

This is an undead-themed monster mini supplement for the Pathfinder RPG. I don't play Pathfinder, but I am familiar with D&D 3/.5...that said, I luvs me some monster books, because a good concept can be translated to other games easily enough.

For $2.99, you get eight monsters over 14 pages

The first is a variation of a banshee, and I would feel silly using her just because of the name (bean chaointe).

The bloodknight is a cool vampire knight who can be compelled into one on one fights due to his twisted sense of honor.

Dark messengers are undead couriers who can ward off good or evil at will, presumably to make their jobs as deliverymen easier.

A lich tyrant is an awesome lich variant, being a king or noble who makes a dark pact to avoid death, rather than being a wizard who turns himself into a lich. They still have the phylactery vulnerability, but are a nice non-spellcasting variant on an old favorite.

Masque ghuls are shapeshifting ghuls who often pose as noblemen.

The Night Dragon is an undead dragon that spews acid and has a gaze that can rot his enemies away. Again, another very cool variant on an old favorite.

Rot giants are creepy undead giants with nearly impervious hides and the ability to devour devour the freshly dead and spew out animated skeletons.

Soul harvesters consume the souls of their prey and burn those souls off to power magic spells, or boost its attack rolls and damage.

Is it worth it? I would probably use half of these without hesitation, and the bean chaointe is the only thing I would seriously doubt myself on, though that has to do with the name and not the write-up...so I'd change the name or just give the one I used a proper name to avoid that.

Great stuff at a great price.

The Paper Dead

In anticipation of my upcoming review of The War of the Dead, let's take a look at The Paper Dead, the first series of paper figures for The War of the Dead.

First off, the figures can be folded trifold or bifold...and for mounted figures, you can make little slits in the vehicle and figure to slide them on. The PDF is layered, so you can "turn off" figures that you don't need to print. That's not quite as cool as Precis Intermedia's customizable sets, but I don't know of anything in the industry that matches those.

The Paper Dead offers three pages of unique zombies of all sorts...page one offering 24 completelty unique shamblers, including priests, mechanics and grocery shoppers still pushing their carts.

The next page offers another 24 shamblers, with a couple in wheelchairs and an assortment of zombie kids, as well as zombies missing their legs.

The third page of zombies offers some very creepy variants meant to be teasers for upcoming adventures such as hulking Ragers, Sprinters, Generals and very creepy zombie newborns.

Six zombie swarm templates are offered, four small, one medium and one large, when you just wanna overlay a mess of zombies.

We then get an assortment of survivors, starting with janitors, street walkers, retirees, expectant mothers and double amputee war veterans.

The next batch offers a Shaun of the Dead tribbute, a goth chick with a chainsaw, a shotgun wielding preacher, a sheriff, biker gang leader and firefighter.

The next page is filled with "generic" types, such as bikers, militia, soldiers and special ops.

Various animals are included on the next page, from horses to feral dogs and guard dogs to ferrets(!)

Motorcycles and bicycles follow.

The next page features counters for cars and the like, and then we get a scale model RV...including extra bits you can add onto the RV for a "zombie plow" and to "zombie proof" the RV!

A series of bases and door markers are included, as are special status markers for the Savage Worlds effects.

This is one of the coolest figure flats sets I have ever seen. If you are running War of the Dead, or any zombie RPG using any kind of minis, I recommend this product highly.

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