Fight On 4 Review

Fight On ​#4 is a 122 page book full of old school gaming goodness. It’s printed by Lulu, which means that at 122 pages it is perfect bound. Some people don’t like that because it will not lay flat on a table if you want it to.

Fight On

Lulu

The interior is black and white. There is a lot of art from the usual public domain suspects, a wide range of art pieces of varying quality, and some hand-drawn maps scanned straight from the square paper the DM used to draw them on. Some of it is my art, so I’m happy as can be. 😄

What’s different from other magazines out there? The black and white interior, no fancy layout, no fancy ads, no fancy maps, no Open Gaming License (OGL), and therefore no stuff derived from the System Reference Document (SRD). In other words, stat blocks will be very generic one liners. Not using the OGL has a benefit for contributors: The magazine only asks for the right to print the work in the issue it’s originally published in. Authors keep all remaining rights.

But what do readers get?

Here’s what I thought

• *Delvers Delve* – I like the suggested uses of a d6 for various tests; things that were modelled as skill checks in third edition. I don’t like the proposed delver class, because I don’t enjoy the kind of traps it seems to be built to handle. In this sense, traps seem to be mini-games reserved for delvers, thieves, or rogues, while everybody else twiddles their thumbs.
• *Silver Knights of the Eld* – I liked this elvish alternative to a paladin.
• **Knights & Knaves** – I liked both character writeups. Of the two, I liked Redbeek even more than Hook-Hand Jack. I suspect that it will be harder to care about Hook-Hand Jack’s backstory, and thus the space it occupies is wasted. Hook-Hand Jack has a cool magic sword, however. Maybe a bit overpowered. But cool none the less.
• *House of the Axe* – it’s a long adventure in a haunted house. I dunno, not my kind of adventure, I think. 25 pages (including art) is far too long!
• *Random Rooms* – cool idea to get over prep block, including a nice personal story of how it helped. I appreciate those personal elements. A bit like the one-to-one design commentary sidebars in the Paizo GameMastery modules.
• *Dungeons and Libraries* – more random tables including three monsters, a custom librarian class that uses an XP rule that complicates things unnecessarily for the DM, and several new spells, as well as a magic item. Interesting idea, but I’m not into libraries, I guess. I liked the library with a beholder librarian in *Dread Pagoda of the Inscrutable Ones: Seeds of Sehan Part 3* in *Dungeon* ​#147 (but have not played it either).
• *Home Remedies for Common Dungeon Ailments* – cool ideas for rumored cures when the appropriate spells are not available; I laughed.
• *The Spring Temple of Ai* – a simple five room dungeon that had excellent atmosphere. I don’t like riddles in my games, but that part is easily changed, I guess.
• *Random Facial Hair* – a hilarious random table. This one should be mandatory, hehe.
• *Education of a Magic-User* – a comic; I laughed.
• **The Tower of Duvan’Ku** – the text for this five room dungeon or trap is a bit too long. I really like the idea and the example hook after the basic dungeon description. It worked for me.
• **The Dread Sorceries of Duvan’Ku** – most of the spells I really liked such as the oath, vomit, and animate dead families of spells.
• **Creepies & Crawlies** – I’m usually not that interested in new monsters, unless they’re the sort of big lists that David Bowman keeps for his Dismal Depths dungeon project (Dismal Depths: More Monsters Dismal Depths: Even More Monsters). Some stats. Two or three sentences. Done.

Paizo

GameMastery

Dismal Depths

Dismal Depths: More Monsters

Dismal Depths: Even More Monsters

​#todo