Re: [BNW] Books

["Thomas E. Reed" <tomreed@sundial.net>]

>Hi everyone,
>     I just began to Guide my BNW players into their first adventure.  I have
>the RuleBook, the Player's Guide, the sceern, Defiants and Delta Prime.  I
>didn't see any reviews aboutr the other products.  Could anybody point me
>out which book is a must and which one is well...  not a must...

Francois:
Here's my very personal estimation of the currently released books. 
(For some reason my earlier post didn't make it in from my webmail 
post. Maybe the list will only accept from my legit E-mail address.)

Bargainers: Only if you have substantial numbers of Bargainers in 
your player group. I am irritated at this book for a moral reason. 
The person who wants to just play a magic-user for fun doesn't get 
the picture of what a Bargainer has to do for his powers until the 
Guide puts him through it. One of my players almost abandoned his 
Bargainer character after learning some of the horrible stuff he 
would have to do (or had done) - until I showed him the "Guide Only" 
section explaining what happens to souls. This should have ALWAYS 
been info available to players, IMHO.

Crescent City: If your campaign is set there or in any big city, it's 
pretty good. Its templates are pretty useful, especially the use and 
depiction of aquarians. It also depicts some NPC's that your campaign 
might find useful in an urban setting.

Glory Days: The World War II stuff doesn't interest me  or my 
players, but the templates like the communicator, dehydrator and 
jungler are very nice. Also, the book has rules for big vehicles like 
tanks and ships. If your campaign has something like the Wonderdome 
or the SHIELD Helicarrier, it can be useful.

Evil Unlimited: Although it has a neat adventure, which (if played 
out to the hilt) could change the Crescent City campaign permanently, 
I'm a bit disappointed. The book should have had some Guide-only 
stuff about creating your own "evil organization." Especially since 
creating powerful and challenging antagonists are the most important 
part of a campaign, I didn't think EU was up to snuff. (It should 
have had more conflict inside the organization, and with rivals. 
Heck, the historic Al Capone had rival gangs who caused him grief - 
why else did Capone order the St. Valentine's Day Massacre against 
Bugs Moran's gang?) If you don't have EU as a major antagonist, I 
wouldn't consider it essential.

Thanks for asking.
-- 
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