Personal Artifacts Fight Leukemia! Edition

Game: Personal Artifacts Fight Leukemia! Edition
Publisher: The Le Games
Series: d20
Reviewer: Kinslayer
Review Dated: 9th, February 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 5/10   [ Perfectly acceptable ]
Total Score: 5
Average Score: 5.00

Personal Artifacts Fight Leukemia! Edition

By The Le Games

First off, this d20 supplement is designed to help a good cause. 100% of the profits go to leukemia research, and an additional one dollar is donated for every copy purchased. The file is stripped of all pictures save the cover page, and consists of four files: two pdf’s–one landscape for on-screen reading and one portrait for printing, a rtf created for cut-and-paste editing, and a rtf preview of The Le Games upcoming Synergistic Artifacts book. A free preview is available, but the link is only found at rpgnow.com, despite being hosted on The Le Games site. The preview is fairly inclusive at twenty pages (the full version is 48). This is their first effort.

I received my copy for review quite unexpectedly. Normally I exchange a few e-mails or other missives with the writer one of the other designers. In this case, I simply received an e-mail with the link to download my review copy. This isn’t a bad thing by any means; it keeps a game reviewer on his toes. Interestingly, it still leaves me wondering who wrote the book. The authors name isn’t listed, and the website doesn’t mention who is behind The Le Games, either. Never one to turn down an opportunity to give deserved credit or criticism, I must continue…

The book consists of different magic items. This itself is nothing new; quite a few d20 supplements consist of new magic items. Personal Artifacts avoids the usual omission of not including the creation requirements by having the entire portfolio consist of artifacts. Artifacts in AD&D were unique and powerful items–too powerful for some gamers. Artifacts in 3rd edition now consist of those magic items that are too powerful to be created by player characters. Conceptually, there’s nothing new about lists & descriptions of magic items, but the items themselves show a high level of creativity. For those DM’s wanting new items to inject into the campaign, this is a good bargain at only $3. Personal Artifacts makes a distinction between major artifacts–which are unique, and minor artifacts–of which there may be more than one. However, none of the items listed are distinguished in this fashion, uniqueness is left up to the individual DM to decide.

How is it written? The text flows smoothly. It is written in a simple informative style. There were few glaring errors in grammar or spelling. The text is left aligned rather than justified; this is a minor drawback, one that doesn’t detract from the work itself. I am decidedly a form-follows-function type, but some may find the uneven right margin distracting. Two items are written in different coloured text (gold luck coin in purple, silver luck coin in blue). The book gets to the good stuff quickly–only two pages are devoted to introduction and terminology, with a third page mostly blank save for the artist’s plug. Adam Briggs paints a nice cover, making me wonder what pictures were removed for the Fight Leukemia! Edition, especially as I was unable to find a non-image-removed, non-anti-leukemia version. I really appreciated the landscape version. For those that don’t know, that means the little doggy is lying down instead of standing up; it makes the pdf much easier to read on the screen. Granted, the multi-file .zip is somewhat larger with the added files, but I definitely found them to be a nice, and useful, touch. The formatting issues are my only real complaint with this book.

The artifacts themselves, as stated previously, show a good deal of creative effort. Rather than minor tacked-on spell effects to what is essentially the same item (e.g. sword that casts fireball and another sword that casts cone of cold), the artifacts are well-thought out, new, magic items. For example, the ring of dichotomy gives your character a second body to switch between–same memory and mind, but everything else, including items, is separate. The artifacts are fully fleshed out, none of the old-school “pick three powers from table IV.” The write-up includes a common name for each artifact–I was pleasantly surprised by this tidbit, a history, location, physical description, weight (for the encumbrance conscious), method of destruction, and of course the game mechanics. With few exceptions, the history and descriptions are at least as long as the game mechanics. This makes Personal Artifacts much more than a mere list of high-powered magic goodies. The history, et al. is a great source for adventure ideas. Some of the items, such as the bow of splitting grow in power with the character, avoiding–or at least reducing–the “I don’t want this crappy +2 sword anymore” problem. The power level of the artifacts varies widely, from the fairly simple bauble of neutralizing that (neutralizes poisons), to the mixed blessing of the various amulets of muticlass (grant some class-based abilities in exchange for some punitive experience point penalties), to the campaign crushing candle of darkness (one day out of each thirty you can blot out the sun for a mile and animate all corpses within that darkness). Many of these artifacts may be too powerful for some campaigns and some players to handle, but such is the nature of the beast.

All considered, I was pleased with Personal Artifacts Fight Leukemia! Edition and expect good things in the future for The Le Games. Formatting issues aside, this is a worthwhile supplement and a good cause.