Much better organized than the other two sets in this series (appropriately enough). Planes of Law details the five lawful planes, with the usual intense focus on the Lower. Enough additional detail is given on each plane to make four of them suitable for adventuring and three of them interesting. It's not as misconception-shattering as Planes of Conflict or as out-and-out whacked as Planes of Chaos, but if you have Guvner or Hardhead PCs, or just characters who like touring all around the whole multiverse, it's a good deal for $4.95.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: Arcadia and Mechanus both get a real facelift, both coming off less as generic TSR "non-Lower-plane-who-cares" environments but as eerie, unpleasant places full of secrets and mysteries. Baator didn't need any more help, but it gets it, and the section on the Garden is a masterpiece of creepiness.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: I think Mount Celestia is just about unsalvageable -- a boring place full of boring beings that's no fun to adventure in (not in the least because you can't even travel on the plane without acting according to its alignment, something not true of any other plane. Acheron is made playable, sure, but its original origin as a bad joke (the plane of battle being an endless void full of bouncing dice) still colors every reinterpretation of it.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

It's theoretically possible to run Planescape without this book; you can get statistics for most of these monsters in the Monstrous Manual, and the information on their societies from Faces of Evil: The Fiends and the various boxed sets.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: On the other hand, isn't it much more convenient to have it all in one place, with great illustrations and a smattering of other useful monsters? While these monsters aren't as brain-twisting or unique as those in the later Compendiums, you're likely to get more use out of them.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Unlike the other two Compendiums, most of this information IS ultimately duplicated or re-explained in other books, and some of it changed. Also, some of these monsters (like foo creatures) could have waited for later books to make room for more of the big, important planar races (guardinals, eladrin, rilmani).<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

A complete guide to the city of Sigil, including a USABLE map, descriptions of dozens of alehouses, businesses, charities, government offices and vital services, plus a beginner's guide to the city written for new visitors. A picture is painted of a Dickensian nightmare of workhouses and poverty just a few doors down from the taverns where the wealthy feast on exotic dishes. There are plenty of flavorful handouts, including menus for some of the taverns, various official proclamations, and a handful of documents you could get in a LOT of trouble for possessing.<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: This is exactly what a citybook should be; it's loaded with useful places to go and NPCs to talk to (interfaced well with the ones introduced in Uncaged: Faces of Sigil). You learn what you need to know, and room is given for DMs to take Sigil and its inhabitants in any of a wide variety of directions. White Wolf REALLY needs to take some lessons from these old Planescape books about how to have signature characters that are fascinating in their own right but don't take over the spotlight from the PCs.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some elements of Sigil as described here are a bit too modern. It's kind of hard to see how a city could get this advanced without, say, interchangeable parts, or have this much of a gap between rich and poor without triggering a real reform movement (the Revolutionary League doesn't count).<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

Basically, this is the splatbook for <I>Planescape</I> -- the only TSR setting really complicated enough to need them. It has chapters on each of the main factions, detailing their factols, explaining their philosophies, describing their headquarters and giving some adventure seeds. The writing is the usual for Planescape (cynical and sparkly, and it still sounds WEIRD hearing educated people like Factol Terrance speaking the stupid cant).<br><br><b>LIKED</b>: If you run factioneer PCs, you're going to need this book. The descriptions in the Player's Guide to the Planes are wholly inadequate, but the Manifesto explains what these philosophies are really ABOUT and why they're worthy of faction status. It's close to mandatory.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: As with all Planescape books, the constant inappropriate use of slang is ANNOYING. Also, while most other factions' philosophies are made to seem cogent, if not actually attractive, there's still not much to recommend Dustmen as PCs. There's also a bit much metaplot -- I'm sorely tempted to replace Pentar and Nilesia with new NPCs of my own creation to make it easier to take the story in new directions.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>

The Planescape setting is an incredibly complicated one, and yet the average character living in it would know quite a bit about how it works. Some kind of Player's Guide to Planescape was necessary to give starting PCs an idea of what their world was like -- to fill the role in this setting that a player's own experiences fill in games set in modern-day Earth.

The Planewalker's Handbook is intended to cover basic questions about the planes, almost like a FAQ in narrative form. It describes the planes in a general sort of way (though it does a better job than that silly players' pamphlet that came in the boxed set). It gives you the mechanics of portals and planar spellcasting. It talks a bit about the factions and major NPC races. It provides some kits for the DM to throw out. It outlines, once again, how belief works.

Once you get past the @#!$@$# cant and actually start to read, the book is friendly and conversational, and seems to realize exactly how huge an infodump is required to get new players into the planes. It still feels like a textbook at times (the Priest Level Loss by Plane and Magical Item Bonus Loss by Plane charts at the back are painful to look at) but it's still a good resource.

The question is whether an infodump is the best way to get this information across, or if the Planescape DM might not be better served by requiring all players to start their first characters as primes and teaching them this information gradually. That's something each DM will have to decide for herself.

(Side note: it has nothing to do with this book per se, but am I the only one who finds the "Acheron, plane of combat, is a giant void full of bouncing dice" joke idiotic?)

Well it's ABOUT TIME.

Until Planescape came around, about the only places lively enough to be adventured in were the Prime Material and the Lower Planes. The quick-and-dirty descriptions in the Manual of the Planes were enough to pique your interest, but that's about it.

It took them a long time to get around to the Elemental Planes, and longer still to make them what they should be -- wholly alien environments where adventurers are in constant peril and can't trust their own experience. The Inner Planes does a good job of pulling this off, expanding on previous material to make these planes live.

I will also say that this is the first time that certain planes (notably Fire and Magma) have been described accurately enough for me to have an answer when a player says "I step through the portal, now what do I see?"

Finally, I'm heartened to see that the Planescape writing team seems to have gotten over its self-congratulatory use of 1900s gutter slang. There's still some cant here, but it's controlled, and it's not put into the mouths of those who shouldn't be using it. This book is a pleasure to read.

This was a repurchase for me -- I got this when it was new, but it disappeared some time ago.

This was the closest that TSR would come to a real cosmology until Planescape (which would end up going in almost the exact opposite direction). The physics of the Immortals is finely detailed, full of head-spinning concepts and opening great vistas of exploration for newly Immortal PCs. The monster listings are wonderful, and the new combat system for Immortal duels is a refreshing change from swing-roll-thwack-dead.

The system for handling Immortal powers is complex, but that's to be expected ... after all, you're not even supposed to open this book until reaching L30-36, with years of experience under your belt. Still, I wouldn't recommend starting from scratch with an Immortal campaign, as these power rules make Champions look like Toon.

The down side? There's not enough information on Immortal society, what they do from day to day, and what it means to serve a concept like Time or Matter. It's established that all Immortals accept that Entropy is necessary for the universe to survive, but Entropy's Immortals are still painted as evil psychopaths.

There was also some ridiculous nonsense about how PCs can "win the game" by reaching Hierarch status, starting over as a 1st level mortal, reaching Hierarch status again, and joining the Old Ones. Interesting concept -- if you've only got one player. Adventures might start to look a little odd if you have four Eternal Immortals and one second-level thief.

Putting that couple of paragraphs aside, the Immortals Set is a great toolkit for DMs to create a fascinating campaign where the PCs walk among their gods as equals. It's a lot of work, but it can be a lot of fun.

The BESM Fantasy Bestiary isn't just a monster manual. Each entry is presented as a template, with two examples given for how you can customize that template to produce a variety of characters.

In addition to giving you fine control over the strength of monsters, it lets you use any of the monsters as a potential PC race. Templates can also be stacked, and several of these are begging for it (like vampire and werewolf).

The only flaw the book has is a tacked-on magical items list at the end. It wasn't necessary, and it's not very useful.

This one's cute: rules for miniatures wargaming using the kinds of toys you'd generally find in a standard toybox. While you can use action figures, the rules are more geared to generic type toys like trains and "100 for a dollar" bagged army men.

The basic rules are simple, without giving much of a nod to balance -- you'll have to use some optional rules if you want things like accurate line-of-sight and sensible point costs. For what they're intended to do, though, they're serviceable, and you can learn them quickly.

This game seems to be intended more as an introduction to wargaming for children (probably 9 and 10 year olds) than as a game for adults. While it's fun, there's not much room for growth. Team Frog makes another game, Critter Commandos, that is similarly kid-friendly but has much more meat (err.. polystyrene) to it.

What we've got here is a fairly basic miniatures game, specifically intended for wild, cartoonish battles.

The rules aren't as simple as they make themselves out to be, and the book's organization could use a little work. But the system's solid and it comes with some creative scenario ideas.

Basically, it's a lot like Warhammer 40k, but the rules are cleaner and, believe it or not, the setting makes much more sense.

While no miniatures are included with this product, there IS a series of miniatures intended for use with it. I purchased one set, the Ratzi Commandos, on impulse some time ago, and they were completely satisfactory. Considering you'll never find miniatures anywhere else for most of these characters, I'm glad the official series is of good quality.