Anyway, last month sales suddenly jumped on Tome of Adventure Design, and there have been a couple of new reviews posted -- both of them at Paizo, which is one of the places selling the book. By the way, if you're thinking of buying the book, I make slightly more money if you buy it direct from Frog God Games, but if you're a frequent Paizo customer you get bennies when you buy more from them. Just so long as you make sure to have a copy! :)
I'll quote one review, in case you're not interested in going to the Paizo review page (which is here):
The book is rife with advice on how to use the tables to get into a creative state where ideas start to flow.
AND IT WORKS!
I was in a bored rut dming, and now I am teaming with ideas I am excited to try. Seriously, looking at the table of contents does the book no justice. When I first opened the Table of Contents and saw a section on monsters, I just sighed. I mean really....I have three bestiaries and the Tome of Horrors. What a waste! And then I started reading and I started to get excited about designing a unique monster to mix in the story, and then I started to see adventures and side quests I could do. It is a book on innovative thinking.
Every DM or person wanting to take a hand at dming should at the very least read pages 127-128. It is the most concise description of creativity and how to get your mind "there" that I have ever read. That should have been next to the Introduction at the beginning of the book, but it is nice to see practical advice peppered through-out the tables.
I was also pleased that the Dungeon Book was the longest section. Reading that helps me come up with ideas for stories--and that is ok.
ToAD is not a random adventure generator. It is a comprehensive tool used to get your creative juices and excitement flowing when you sit down to create an adventure, and when it starts working you stop rolling and reading and sit back and surf the creative wave you forgot you had in you.
The book's at a 5-star rating with multiple reviews, which wouldn't impress me when it's based on just one review, but when the 5-star ratings begin to stack up, it's pretty cool.
I bought mine through Troll & Toad and I just can't wait to get my hands on it. I'm just about to complete a short hiatus from my main game (D&D4E that I run) and after a short break period with Pathfinder that another player will be running, I'm looking to try to convince the group to go old school. I'm currenly considering ACKS, LL, or C&C and I think I'll be going mostly homebrew for setting and adventures. Normally, I run a game that is in the "official" setting and run a 50/50 mix of published and original material. But for the old school, I"m thinking I'll start off with a published dungeon crawl just to get my bearing with the system (likely will use the wonder Barrowmaze) and then stike off on whatever tangent the group seems to want to run with. That's where I'm hoping TOAD comes in. I just can't wait to crack it open and see where it takes me. All the reviews I've read have been simply glowing. Keep up the great work and I hope your physical therapy thing (I'm new to your blog so I'm not sure the whole story) goes well!
ReplyDeleteAfter the S&W Complete fiasco, I wasn't too keen on buying anything from Frog God again, but your work is always excellent, so I decided to give this a go.
ReplyDeleteGlad I did! Amazing book!