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20 high-quality, high-res images (about $1 an image). Great a variety of projects, heavy on the on the fantasy (though I'd love to find use for the 3rd Reich cyber-zombie).
Images look like paintings and not overtly like computer images. I like that.
There are a couple demons I have a use for already, so that made it worth it to me. The rest is icing on the cake.
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Publisher Reply: |
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Thanks for the review Timothy!
Joe J. Calkins
www.cerberusart.com
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Originally posted at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2013/01/16/tabletop-review-the-tal
isman-of-gorshan-pc/
The Talisman of Gorshan is what equates to a 30 page adventure but in an online format done with HTML and lots of very nice graphics and hyper-linking to make it easy to run with just a computer, even going as so far as to provide reliable links to a dice-roller and the SRD pages for Dungeons & Dragons 3.0/3.5 and Pathfinder as well as Osric. While it strives to be an online only adventure, there are a few snags. You can’t beat the price as it is free and is especially easy on the eyes, but in the end there’s little pay off except through GM or DM depending on your game choice, intervention. While this can spur off into a whole other set of adventures I would have liked to see a little bit more closure here as a standalone but could work nicely into an ongoing campaign.
The story is pretty simple, almost a standard fetch quest attached to a dungeon crawl, especially in that you can’t stop at just one place and things get overly complicated at the places you do go. The party is enjoying themselves at an inn when a mysterious group enters, sizes them up and then proceeds to offer them a job. It seems that Gorshan, a mage of apparently some wealth, has decided that he wants to retrieve a talisman that used to be his that was taken by Orcs and has been broken into three pieces and scattered, the pieces of which there’s a map already made for the party with locations, although not exact. From there it’s up to the party to decide where to go first and last, and what they’ll check out when they get there. Travel time alone will take a group roughly two weeks game time on foot not including exploring the locations, which to be honest, aren’t very big in and of themselves.
This is a decent interim adventure for the prescribed level of eight-ten and four to five players. It’s easily a productive group’s four hour session, or a non-productive group two of those sessions. I actually rolled up four Pathfinder characters at level eight to run through this using the medium experience leveling table and the Pathfinder SRD. I went with a mostly ‘classic’ group, with two humans, a Paladin and a Cleric, a Half-Elf Sorcerer, and an Elven Rogue, so I had my basics covered at least. While I ran through the adventure one of the big snags I ran into was the inclusion of an Umber Hulk. While this wouldn’t have been a problem for a party at eighth level, the Umber Hulk is not included in the SRD as it ties into Dungeons and Dragons specifically, so no stats are available through the OGL, legally, online. A quick Google search did pull up a questionable stat block for one, but I opted instead to dig further and some very helpful people years ago recommended a Grey Render in place of the Umber Hulk, so I used that instead.
For a group of four players starting at level eight, this is guaranteed to at least give them enough experience to level them at least once if they’re thorough, so if you’re in need of a leveling adventure to boost your players a bit before throwing them into something else, this’ll do for that. I found the loot you can acquire through the adventure isn’t terribly game-breaking either and is level appropriate for the most part. You shouldn’t be cringing later from anything your players pick up here, but don’t go in blind. One of the named swords you can pick up looks pretty potent so adjusting to your group might be necessary as always.
As a GM tool, this adventure being online like this functions much the same as a bookmarked PDF would, with a nice dice roller and links to the appropriate SRD’s and stat links for the standard D20 D&D SRD included. Took me a little more work with the Pathfinder SRD, but it’s minimal, and it’s organized fairly well, almost to the point where it’s just as easy as cracking open a book. It still took me longer than cracking my books but more from familiarity than anything else. Aside from not having stats available, technically, for one of the monsters, the adventure works pretty well. It manages to provide a decent mix of monsters which isn’t something that a lot of main supplements would do instead throwing the same mobs at you time and time again. The variety is nice and breaks things up, and even within the same areas it changes them up often enough so your players hopefully won’t be making slaying songs for a particular creature. I had one Fourth Edition adventure I’d converted to Pathfinder that I’d just grabbed real quick and did a quick and dirty monster conversion by simply looking it up in the Bestiary and every fight for almost half the adventure was freaking zombies. Yeah, boring as hell for both me and the players. That was the first and only time I’d pulled a random adventure off the shelf. I’m glad to see a variety here and some new critters to slay as well including an Assassin Golem, a Dragonhawk, and the Nightmare Dragon.
Using this with a players group is going to be problematic, however. While there is a player map provided, and there are decently detailed maps of the dungeons, everything is completely accessible to anyone looking at the site, meaning there is no real surprise for the players who happen to click through the links. There aren’t any print friendly versions of any of the maps either, which means any non-tech savvy GMs are going to have to muddle through with this for their players. You can just view the images, and then print that way, but I feel the quality would suffer and defeat the whole purpose of having an adventure where you need no books. Now you could pull the images to a separate device for viewing, but again you’re running into more prep work. This isn’t a huge downside as you can work around it, but a version for the players alone without any links would have been great.
Overall it’s a standard dungeon crawl affair with some very well done maps, a good selection of bad guys to throw at your players, and in the future, an evil and corrupt mage that they can take down if you take the time to stat him out for future use. It’s good if you need some filler around levels eight to ten and for a level eight group of four will definitely earn them at least a level. While I think it has a few issues, it’s definitely worth a look as it is free, and with a few tweaks, it’s a format I think more GMs at the table with a laptop, tablet or running over the internet through a voice chat program, could embrace if handled correctly, which for the most part it is here. The artwork is fantastic, and if this were a printed adventure I’d give it a thumbs up for purchase.
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I don't see the need to make all the buying process when it can be done with a simple link.
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Publisher Reply: |
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Thank you for your question Romwald. While the product is in fact nothing more than a link, in order for me to share my work with RPGNow customers it must be posted as a FREE product. I apologize for any inconvenience.
Thanks and have a great day!
Joe J. Calkins
Cerberus Art |
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This is an interesting concept, a true fusion of classic tabletop role-playing and computer technology... and a much more beautiful rendition of something that I - as a computer professional and enthusiastic GM - have been doing for quite some time.
Imagine, if you will, having all your notes and maps (and more) set out as hyperlinked documents (that's like web pages, folks) so that everything is at your fingertips when you are running your game. No more ferreting through notebooks for that elusive detail that's a vital clue, or opening a monster book when the players don't actually know that there is one around...
Stop imagining and go to have a play!
The hyperlinked GM's map is a real treat. I recall how some years ago I taught a night school class in web page design, and one of my students happened to be my DM... and his project was pretty much this sort of thing. In some ways, if you happen to be a competent webhead, there isn't much new... but it is so well done that it is worth bringing to your attention.
I think the one change I'd make is to have a downloadable stand-alone version for those of us who game in places that you cannot get a reliable internet connection. Whilst there is a 'player map' it's not clear how you give them access to it apart from turning your screen to face them momentarily, unless they are also on the site and so have access to the things they shouldn't see... likewise, it would be nice to have a separate image to flash up for the monsters - "You see this coming towards you, growling" - as the pictures are nice but embedded in the text complete with handy stat-block.
Although it's billed as being for 'D&D (older editions)' you have access to the D20 SRD, the Pathfinder SRD and to OSRIC (and a few more bits and bobs) so you may run it using the ruleset of your choice.
It's really rather fun, and very lush to look at.... maybe not quite so good on a laptop as on my big screen that I use for reviewing - fiddling with text size in the browser has no effect and there is no way to change colours if light text on a dark, faintly textured background doesn't suit you - but overall a magnificent effort.
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A collection worth having for any professional looking for quality material or anyone that just appreciates good artwork.
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A wonderful collection to be sure. The fact that so much of his work has been put together into a single package shows a varying progression in both style and proficiency and in all cases, they are, well they're just great.
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CERBERUS ILLUSTRATION does what they do best in this set... Offer high quality figures in droves, for a decent price.
There is a shortage of front/back sided heroes out there. This set was warmly welcomed. Most hero sets offer a great image on the front, and a "silhouette" on the back, and come in "tent" form. These are actual figures, and enhance game play!
I was a little disappointed, however, with the fact that the figures in the front cover weren't anywhere in the set. It seems to me that including figures in the cover artwork should be the "best" figures in the set, and to feature these kind of let me down.
There were several images (about a dozen) that are offered in many color options (and in the case of the females, there are some that have wings, and some without). There are also "generic" figures that can be thugs, hirelings and gang memebers... they are also recolored to be police and guards. This is a very good use of these figures.
I personally would have rather seen less of the dogs (there are roughly 20 in the set), and would have liked to seen another "hero" in various colors worked into the set. A dozen police officers are fine. A dozen guards are fine. A dozen thugs are fine. A couple dozen guard dogs... a bit much.
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44 pages of art (and some ads).
All come in both color and grey scale. Excellent images really.
Includes an easy to read and understand license.
The PDF format is bit more cumbersome, but the art is great.
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Exactly the type of artwork small publishers need, with an easy to work within license and an even easier to work with artist, Joe Calkins collections are a must have for small publishers when it comes to stock art packages whose value highly exceeds their price.
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This is really a nifty set of paper figures: well detailed, easy to cut out and assemble, and complete with walkers, heavy weapons, and some terrain. An absolute bargain!
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Absolutely fantastic, could not be happier with this image. The style in which it is done is perfect for what I needed, it's crystal clear and very high quality. This was my first venture into the world of stock art, and I must say, if this is the level of quality I can expect from Cerberus, I will be purchasing more art packs. Thank You.
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I am a huge fan of pretty much everything Cerberus does and this is a great reason why! High quality beautiful artwork that is easy for any small publisher, like me, to afford.
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I've been a fan of Cerberus Stock Art for a while now. They do good stuff!
As with the other sets, a number of pieces here are easily cover art material - especially for an indie publisher such as myself. The $20 price tag is phenomenal for a product that could give me four or five covers, as well as a good number of interior art pieces.
The quality is the same as other sets from Cerberus - a good bit of work has gone into this and it shows. It may not be everyone's style, but a quick look at the images on this product's page will show you what you're getting into.
I've used these products before and eagerly paid for them, and I'll use them again when new sets arrive.
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Great artworks. Good colors. 75 paper figures ( some mods and many color variations on eleven basic figures ) , with front and real back. There aren't many superhero/modern paper miniatures but that's not the point.
The point is the overall quality. A bargain.
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Utility: 5 (Very useful as player handouts or for accent art on a website or blog)
Artistic Appeal: 5 (High quality artist renditions)
Cost: 4 (Good deal for the sheer number of quality pictures)
Comments:
This is a stockpile of quality fantasy images. Each picture is presented in full color or in gray scale and are large. I highly recommend them. The price is up there, but you get 19 different images in two versions (color and gray).
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