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d20 Accessory
Swords of Evil
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By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack and Co-host of Mortality Radio
Sizing Up the Target
Swords of Evil is a 92-page perfect bound accessory published by Fast Forward Entertainment. Edited by Chris Trossen. The cover and interior work is done by William Connors and retails for $19.95.
First Blood
I’ve dodged picking up Fast Forward products for a while, mainly due to Weird Uncle Rufus’s assessment of poor editing in their products. He has a point, but only on a limited scale. This product takes on the 22 artifact level swords and then gives a brief history and location of that weapon to be inserted into the DM’s campaign. A Book of Lairs for evil swords.
After reading the book, I found it to have some well thought out qualities. A good deal of time and effort went into the histories of these evil blades and their personalities and desires, in this the Fast Forward brevity of detail is not lacking.
Every sword described has a richly detailed history and motives that drive the blades. Ranging from minor artifacts to major ones, they cover the gamut of standard cultures and races, from Hindu to Viking and human to demi-human. These evil blades have cut a bloody swath across the kingdoms they ravaged until falling into the lair where your players can encounter them. Their personalities range from megalomaniac demagogue to disapproving mentor and can be found from underground caves to pyramids and castles.
Each sword slays a specific race or class and carries special powers designed to drive towards that goal. The motivation ranges from slaying all elves to ruling the world. They can seek out wielders of like temperament or seduce or pervert a well-meaning innocent. They also range in type from Sais and daggers to scimitars and bastard swords and all types in-between. Also any current wielders are also well defined with a history and how they came to hold these devilish blades and what they hope to gain from them.
The current lair of each blade is given, this is where the detail starts to slip, whether this is intentional to allow the DM to add to it or a slip due to size considerations the locales could be larger, should be larger in some cases than what is given. Again this could be by design to allow the DM to ‘personalize’ the blade and it’s lair.
Critical Hits
Fast Forward has already published a Book of Swords, Book of Rings and a Book of Wonderous Items, on the surface this would seem to be redundant but the concentration and dedication to just evil blades and lairs make this a likely reason for a new book and who can resist new toys? Also, the above-mentioned books are all hard-bound and a good $10 more expensive, making it a bargain. This could mean that future products could be on the way dedicated to good aligned blades or swords of neutrality.
Given the assortment of genres captured in this book, there should be many crunchy bits for everyone. And even if there isn’t, the brevity in lair description should allow for the adaptation by the DM to fit their campaign.
Critical Misses
As I mentioned before, where this really falls short is not in the swords, their carriers or their history, it’s in the briefness of the description of where they are located. Improving the maps of the lairs would be a step in the right direction for future releases and given the wealth of talent at Fast Forward this should not be too hard of a challenge to meet.
Coup de Grace
Swords of Evil shows me the Fast Forward is ready to step up a few notches as a player in the d20 market. The meat of this book is in the item and history of the blades and their holders, these are areas typically under used in favor of a faster move towards game play or left too much to the mind of a harried DM. Looking for the perfect weapon to outfit that recurring villain. The addition of the sword and it’s current foil could be the addition you as the DM are looking for.
To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
Sizing Up the Target
Swords of Evil is a 92-page perfect bound accessory published by Fast Forward Entertainment. Edited by Chris Trossen. The cover and interior work is done by William Connors and retails for $19.95.
First Blood
I’ve dodged picking up Fast Forward products for a while, mainly due to Weird Uncle Rufus’s assessment of poor editing in their products. He has a point, but only on a limited scale. This product takes on the 22 artifact level swords and then gives a brief history and location of that weapon to be inserted into the DM’s campaign. A Book of Lairs for evil swords.
After reading the book, I found it to have some well thought out qualities. A good deal of time and effort went into the histories of these evil blades and their personalities and desires, in this the Fast Forward brevity of detail is not lacking.
Every sword described has a richly detailed history and motives that drive the blades. Ranging from minor artifacts to major ones, they cover the gamut of standard cultures and races, from Hindu to Viking and human to demi-human. These evil blades have cut a bloody swath across the kingdoms they ravaged until falling into the lair where your players can encounter them. Their personalities range from megalomaniac demagogue to disapproving mentor and can be found from underground caves to pyramids and castles.
Each sword slays a specific race or class and carries special powers designed to drive towards that goal. The motivation ranges from slaying all elves to ruling the world. They can seek out wielders of like temperament or seduce or pervert a well-meaning innocent. They also range in type from Sais and daggers to scimitars and bastard swords and all types in-between. Also any current wielders are also well defined with a history and how they came to hold these devilish blades and what they hope to gain from them.
The current lair of each blade is given, this is where the detail starts to slip, whether this is intentional to allow the DM to add to it or a slip due to size considerations the locales could be larger, should be larger in some cases than what is given. Again this could be by design to allow the DM to ‘personalize’ the blade and it’s lair.
Critical Hits
Fast Forward has already published a Book of Swords, Book of Rings and a Book of Wonderous Items, on the surface this would seem to be redundant but the concentration and dedication to just evil blades and lairs make this a likely reason for a new book and who can resist new toys? Also, the above-mentioned books are all hard-bound and a good $10 more expensive, making it a bargain. This could mean that future products could be on the way dedicated to good aligned blades or swords of neutrality.
Given the assortment of genres captured in this book, there should be many crunchy bits for everyone. And even if there isn’t, the brevity in lair description should allow for the adaptation by the DM to fit their campaign.
Critical Misses
As I mentioned before, where this really falls short is not in the swords, their carriers or their history, it’s in the briefness of the description of where they are located. Improving the maps of the lairs would be a step in the right direction for future releases and given the wealth of talent at Fast Forward this should not be too hard of a challenge to meet.
Coup de Grace
Swords of Evil shows me the Fast Forward is ready to step up a few notches as a player in the d20 market. The meat of this book is in the item and history of the blades and their holders, these are areas typically under used in favor of a faster move towards game play or left too much to the mind of a harried DM. Looking for the perfect weapon to outfit that recurring villain. The addition of the sword and it’s current foil could be the addition you as the DM are looking for.
To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
Psion
Adventurer
Swords of Evil
Swords of Evil is an artifact sourcebook by Fast Forward Entertainment. Unlike their items of power series, swords of evil is less a collection of short stories. Instead, each item is presented with the statistics of its current bearer and their current domicile/dungeon.
A Frist Look
Swords of Evil is a 96 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $19.99.
The cover of Swords of Evil has the same grainy red motif that other FFE books use. The front cover depicts a white robed figure with black flesh and glaring red eyes wielding an evil-looking sword.
The interior is black-and-white, with artwork by William W. Conners. As with the items of power series, many of interior illustrations appear to be retouched photos of novelty items. There are other illustrations, and the quality of artwork is passable.
The interior cartography is also similar to that of other FFE products (such as Dungeon World and Treasure Quests.) The maps appear as computer grapics-generated pictures with beveled 3d shaped dropped on a gridded map.
A Deeper Look
There are 22 swords depicted in the book. Each section has four major categories of material related to the sword. First, the statistics for the sword are given, followed by the history of the sword, statistics for the current wielder of the sword, and a lair (read: dungeon) where the wielder and sword resides.
All of the swords here are classified as minor or major artifacts. The book calls all swords that have prices and other construction requirements minor artifacts and all other swords major artifacts. Technically, the former should not be artifacts at all according to the d20 system rules, and most of the latter are about the power level normally accorded minor artifacts.
The swords themselves seem interesting enough, and there are no outlandish rules calls or outright errors. There are some breaks with 3e conventions, such as using different bonuses for different types of targets as in first and second edition, vice using the bane quality of 3e, but this does not make the swords unusable. The history and background of the swords are also interesting, painting pictures of a variety of items that any reasonable person would want to destroy. Further, less space is consumed with these histories than in FFE's Items of Power books.
The NPCs are villains of various power. The villains are generally interesting and well constructed, but there are some problems here as well, some glaringly so. For example, Antonitus, the wielder of Lifedrinker, is a lich fighter/sorcerer, but has CRs, HD, attack bonus, and other statistics that do not match this class and level.
Each of the adventures included is a short dungeon crawl, most with less than 10 keyed locations. Nothing stands out as wrong with any of these, and they have a variety of themes, but the whole concept of 22 dungeons based around a sword seems a bit redundant. However, in some cases, this low level meshes will with the background of the weapon, such as Dwarfeater, which has dominated a relatively low-level rogue as a pawn in its murderous sprees.
Conclusion
I do think that Swords of Evil is of much better utility than the hardbound "Items of Power" books. There is a much better ratio of background/flavor text to usuable text, and the authors lean more strongly on using the actual d20 System conventions instead of presenting the concepts much more generally as they did in the older books.
However, as stated, I doubt that I would use more than a few of these dungeons due to the repetitive theme. Further, there are still some rules problems in the book, albeit not as pronounced or frequent as in the prior FFE magic item related books.
Overall Grade: C+
-Alan D. Kohler
Swords of Evil is an artifact sourcebook by Fast Forward Entertainment. Unlike their items of power series, swords of evil is less a collection of short stories. Instead, each item is presented with the statistics of its current bearer and their current domicile/dungeon.
A Frist Look
Swords of Evil is a 96 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $19.99.
The cover of Swords of Evil has the same grainy red motif that other FFE books use. The front cover depicts a white robed figure with black flesh and glaring red eyes wielding an evil-looking sword.
The interior is black-and-white, with artwork by William W. Conners. As with the items of power series, many of interior illustrations appear to be retouched photos of novelty items. There are other illustrations, and the quality of artwork is passable.
The interior cartography is also similar to that of other FFE products (such as Dungeon World and Treasure Quests.) The maps appear as computer grapics-generated pictures with beveled 3d shaped dropped on a gridded map.
A Deeper Look
There are 22 swords depicted in the book. Each section has four major categories of material related to the sword. First, the statistics for the sword are given, followed by the history of the sword, statistics for the current wielder of the sword, and a lair (read: dungeon) where the wielder and sword resides.
All of the swords here are classified as minor or major artifacts. The book calls all swords that have prices and other construction requirements minor artifacts and all other swords major artifacts. Technically, the former should not be artifacts at all according to the d20 system rules, and most of the latter are about the power level normally accorded minor artifacts.
The swords themselves seem interesting enough, and there are no outlandish rules calls or outright errors. There are some breaks with 3e conventions, such as using different bonuses for different types of targets as in first and second edition, vice using the bane quality of 3e, but this does not make the swords unusable. The history and background of the swords are also interesting, painting pictures of a variety of items that any reasonable person would want to destroy. Further, less space is consumed with these histories than in FFE's Items of Power books.
The NPCs are villains of various power. The villains are generally interesting and well constructed, but there are some problems here as well, some glaringly so. For example, Antonitus, the wielder of Lifedrinker, is a lich fighter/sorcerer, but has CRs, HD, attack bonus, and other statistics that do not match this class and level.
Each of the adventures included is a short dungeon crawl, most with less than 10 keyed locations. Nothing stands out as wrong with any of these, and they have a variety of themes, but the whole concept of 22 dungeons based around a sword seems a bit redundant. However, in some cases, this low level meshes will with the background of the weapon, such as Dwarfeater, which has dominated a relatively low-level rogue as a pawn in its murderous sprees.
Conclusion
I do think that Swords of Evil is of much better utility than the hardbound "Items of Power" books. There is a much better ratio of background/flavor text to usuable text, and the authors lean more strongly on using the actual d20 System conventions instead of presenting the concepts much more generally as they did in the older books.
However, as stated, I doubt that I would use more than a few of these dungeons due to the repetitive theme. Further, there are still some rules problems in the book, albeit not as pronounced or frequent as in the prior FFE magic item related books.
Overall Grade: C+
-Alan D. Kohler
JacktheRabbit
Explorer
If I figure in tax I am paying about a buck a sword description.
OUCH! I think I shall pass on this one.
OUCH! I think I shall pass on this one.
Simon Collins
Explorer
This is not a playtest review.
Swords Of Evil is an accessory detailing twenty two evil-aligned blades from Fast Forward Entertainment.
Swords Of Evil is a 96-page softcover mono product costing $19.99. Margins, text and white space are all fine though the OGL and ads take up four pages. The front cover shows a white-cloaked figure with burning red eyes wielding a ridged sword - atmospheric if relatively poor in detail. The rest of the artwork (which consists mainly of what look like touched-up photos of weapons) is fairly poor. Maps vary in quality, some missing scale or compass direction, and with varying scales. Writing style and editing are poor.
Each blade (swords, daggers, etc.) has four pages dedicated to it and is assigned an artifact level - minor or major (these seem a little excessive for the actual powers wielded for some of the major artrifacts). As well as the basic stats for the sword, there is a section detailing the history of the sword, its current wielder (with stat block) and the wielder's lair (with map, and creature stat blocks where appropriate).
The villains and lairs themselves vary in quality - a review of the sword Dwarfeater, for example, reveals a number of errors in the villain's stat block (a CR of 8 for a 5th-level rogue presumably takes into account his use of the blade but no explanation of how this is done is given), and he shares his lair with an ancient red dragon, a colony of barghests, and three flocks of cloakers - wow! that's some strain on the local ecology.
The different lairs are influenced by a variety of historical influences and fantasy genres, from Egyptian trapped pyramids through Romanesque towers to the society of mediaeval Japan as well as more standard fantasy settings, including a number of references to the drow goddess Lolth in the final lair.
There is a table at the end of the book summarising the powers of the different blades.
Conclusion:
What begins as an interesting premise falls down on several levels - the stat blocks contain numerous errors, the ecology of the lairs is 1st-Edition style with apparently little thought of the impact of different creatures living so close together, and with the repetitive theme it is likely a GM will only use one or two of the provided adventures (considering also the high impact of the artifacts on a campaign).
This book does not compare with Swords Into Plowshares, which provides more interesting and useable weapons with better plot hooks and sounder stats at a quarter of the price (though it is a .pdf). There may be a few ideas to plunder from Swords Of Evil for those who enjoy dungeon bashing, but there is little else to recommend it.
Swords Of Evil is an accessory detailing twenty two evil-aligned blades from Fast Forward Entertainment.
Swords Of Evil is a 96-page softcover mono product costing $19.99. Margins, text and white space are all fine though the OGL and ads take up four pages. The front cover shows a white-cloaked figure with burning red eyes wielding a ridged sword - atmospheric if relatively poor in detail. The rest of the artwork (which consists mainly of what look like touched-up photos of weapons) is fairly poor. Maps vary in quality, some missing scale or compass direction, and with varying scales. Writing style and editing are poor.
Each blade (swords, daggers, etc.) has four pages dedicated to it and is assigned an artifact level - minor or major (these seem a little excessive for the actual powers wielded for some of the major artrifacts). As well as the basic stats for the sword, there is a section detailing the history of the sword, its current wielder (with stat block) and the wielder's lair (with map, and creature stat blocks where appropriate).
The villains and lairs themselves vary in quality - a review of the sword Dwarfeater, for example, reveals a number of errors in the villain's stat block (a CR of 8 for a 5th-level rogue presumably takes into account his use of the blade but no explanation of how this is done is given), and he shares his lair with an ancient red dragon, a colony of barghests, and three flocks of cloakers - wow! that's some strain on the local ecology.
The different lairs are influenced by a variety of historical influences and fantasy genres, from Egyptian trapped pyramids through Romanesque towers to the society of mediaeval Japan as well as more standard fantasy settings, including a number of references to the drow goddess Lolth in the final lair.
There is a table at the end of the book summarising the powers of the different blades.
Conclusion:
What begins as an interesting premise falls down on several levels - the stat blocks contain numerous errors, the ecology of the lairs is 1st-Edition style with apparently little thought of the impact of different creatures living so close together, and with the repetitive theme it is likely a GM will only use one or two of the provided adventures (considering also the high impact of the artifacts on a campaign).
This book does not compare with Swords Into Plowshares, which provides more interesting and useable weapons with better plot hooks and sounder stats at a quarter of the price (though it is a .pdf). There may be a few ideas to plunder from Swords Of Evil for those who enjoy dungeon bashing, but there is little else to recommend it.
Simon, I have to ask...Did you buy this book, or was this a free copy.
With the junk this company produces I can't believe they stay in business. Jim Ward must have a nice cash reserve that he is bleeding dry.
Hell, I offered to proofread their products for free to keep them from publishing books full of D20 errors. They can't even seem to grasp even the simple CR system.
ASEO out
With the junk this company produces I can't believe they stay in business. Jim Ward must have a nice cash reserve that he is bleeding dry.
Hell, I offered to proofread their products for free to keep them from publishing books full of D20 errors. They can't even seem to grasp even the simple CR system.
ASEO out
Messageboard Golem
First Post
You were going to buy it new?!
