Adamant Entertainment distilled some of the best features of the Planetary Romance/Sci-Fantasy genre into their Mars books. The lineage is obviously Edgar Rice Burroughs, with Green, Red and White (Ape) Martians. There is also a fair enough amount of H.G. Wells, but I have a hard time seeing this dying Mars invading Earth. As they advertise this is not the Mars of reality, this is the Mars that never was. This is Barsoom as it were. While not "John Carter of Mars the RPG" it can be played that way. There are even some surprises in the form of the Grey Men of Mars. Hint, they are not the "Greys" of later UFO mythology.

There are plenty of options for characters with an emphasis on high heroism and great feats. Imagine all the adventure of Victorian Times and the Pulp Era with the feel of a Space Opera in a D&D campaign then you get an idea of what Mars can do or be. This all reminds me a bit of the "Dying Earth" genre as well, since Mars is dying. Maybe that invasion of Earth is not too improbable after all.

I enjoyed this and really want to play a game on Mars now!
I rated this one a bit higher than the d20 version since I feel the fit with Savage Worlds is a bit better. This is Savage Mars.

Adamant Entertainment distilled some of the best features of the Planetary Romance/Sci-Fantasy genre into their Mars books. The lineage is obviously Edgar Rice Burroughs, with Green, Red and White (Ape) Martians. There is also a fair enough amount of H.G. Wells, but I have a hard time seeing this dying Mars invading Earth. As they advertise this is not the Mars of reality, this is the Mars that never was. This is Barsoom as it were. While not "John Carter of Mars the RPG" it can be played that way. There are even some surprises in the form of the Grey Men of Mars. Hint, they are not the "Greys" of later UFO mythology.

There are plenty of options for characters with an emphasis on high heroism and great feats. Imagine all the adventure of Victorian Times and the Pulp Era with the feel of a Space Opera in a D&D campaign then you get an idea of what Mars can do or be. This all reminds me a bit of the "Dying Earth" genre as well, since Mars is dying. Maybe that invasion of Earth is not too improbable after all.

I enjoyed this and really want to play a game on Mars now!

When I hear the word "compendium" I assume that it will actually contain more than 16 pages... apparently I was wrong. This pdf only contains a few NPCs and some base thoughts and rules on them. Granted it IS only three dollars but there are much better products containing much more content for the same price.

The following review was originally posted at Roleplayers Chronicle and can be read in its entirety at http://roleplayerschronicle.com/?p=24255.

If you enjoy the planetary romance genre as envisioned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with a bit of H. G. Wells “War of the Worlds” tripod action thrown in, you’ll have fun with this product. All of your favorite people and creatures are here, whether red, green, white, or grey. This is a collection of all the best tropes in the genre along with some new perspectives, set up to deliver some serious Savage Worlds fun.

OVERALL

I enjoyed MARS and found many worthwhile things that could be used in various genres. One of the strengths of Savage Worlds supplements is that the materials can easily be ported over into other environments. In eight chapters with a 192 page count, the planet and its history are presented very well. Character creation, player character races, gear, setting-specific rules, a gamemastering section, a five-part Plot Point campaign, and an excellent bestiary fill this book with quality content.

RATINGS

Publication Quality: 8 out of 10 The production quality is excellent. There are several grammar and spelling issues which could have been avoided with some more extensive proofreading, but this is only slightly distracting from the otherwise rich content. There is a lot of “white space” which makes the content seem light for those used to very compact formats, but the art and content are very good.

Mechanics: 10 out of 10 The new Edges, Hindrances, and Setting Rules presented in this volume integrate well with the core Savage Worlds rules, and they provide an excellent extension that serves this genre well. The rules for creating new character races and species are particularly useful.

Value Add: 9 out of 10 The planetary romance genre is well-represented and the materials can easily be used to spice up Savage Worlds games in completely different environments. The pricing on both the hard-copy and PDF editions is at the higher end, however the content probably justifies the investment.

Overall: 9 out of 10 Overall, this is an excellent addition to the Savage Worlds RPG and will permit the players to have a rollicking good time on Barsoom. One interesting thought might be to mix elements of Mars: Savage Worlds Edition with Pinnacle’s excellent Space 1889 – Red Sands setting, just to give the British Empire a bit of a challenge. Mars: Savage Worlds Edition is well-supported with a series of supplements available at RPGNow.com, including Blood Legacy of Mars, City-States of Mars: Korium, Face of Mars, Minions of Mars, Rebels of Mars, Sell-Swords of Mars, Sky-Tyrant of Mars, Soul-Thieves of Mars, and Warriors of Mars.

Pact of the Vermin Lords was one of the first third-party warlock pacts to appear after the publication of D&D 4e, and deserves props for that alone. The idea behind the pact is a bit “icky”: you’ve bound your soul to whatever mystical forces control vermin. Yuck. The power structure follows the typical template for a warlock: one at-will power that distinctively exhibits the pact, a special effect when an enemy under your Warlock’s Curse is reduced to 0 hp, and a bunch of thematic powers. Unlike the pacts in the original PH, the pact of the vermin lords provides an extra encounter power as a boon; however, author Stefen Styrsky has tried to balance this by turning off the character’s Warlock’s Curse while the bonus encounter power, Recognize the Master, is in effect. The optional powers at each level do a good job of distinguishing the vermin lords pact from other pacts. The supplement also includes a paragon path and one new feat designed to improve the basic pact boon. As a reader, I cringed repeatedly at grammatical mistakes and proofreading oversights, as well as departures from established D&D 4e stylistic standards. As a player, the very idea of the pact makes my skin crawl, and I want nothing to do with it. As a DM, I wouldn’t object if a player wanted to run a vermin lords pact warlock in my campaign, though I’d probably apply some social stigma in NPC encounters. Overall, my feeling about this product is basically, “Take it or leave it.”

Dragons have an almost universal appeal—certainly among gamers, at least—and this supplement capitalizes on that appeal by presenting a warlock pact for D&D 4e that binds a warlock to a primal dragon. The power structure follows the typical template for a warlock: one at-will power that distinctively exhibits the pact, a special effect when an enemy under your Warlock’s Curse is reduced to 0 hp, and a bunch of thematic powers. Unlike the pacts in the original PH, the pact of the vermin lords provides an extra encounter power as a boon; however, author Stefen Styrsky has tried to balance this by turning off the character’s Warlock’s Curse while the bonus encounter power, The Object of Your Wrath, is in effect. The special at-will for this pact is basically the same as a dragonborn’s dragon breath power. The supplement includes one paragon path, four feats, and four magic items for dragon lords pact warlocks. The descriptions and power effects do a good job of evoking a draconic feel. The artwork style varies drastically from one piece to the next, and the character featured on the cover and on the paragon path page isn’t a recognizable D&D 4e race at all. As a reader, I cringed occasionally at grammar and usage mistakes and proofreading oversights (“exhale” used as a noun, backward apostrophes, etc), as well as departures from established D&D 4e stylistic standards and the lack of page numbers. As a player, this is a pact that I could get excited about. I’ve never chosen to play a warlock, but I might if this pact were on the menu. As a DM, I’d be happy for a player to run a dragon lords pact warlock in my campaign.

I think this supplement was originally published before Wizards of the Coast released Arcane Power, with its vestige pact. Thematically, there’s a bit of overlap between these pacts, but mechanically, the ghost pact stands on its own. The power structure follows the typical template for a warlock: one at-will power that distinctively exhibits the pact, a special effect when an enemy under your Warlock’s Curse is reduced to 0 hp, and a bunch of thematic powers. Unlike the other pacts in Adamant’s pact series (by the same author), this one includes only one piece of art (on the front cover, repeated on p. 10, uncredited). The formatting could use some improvements (adding page numbers, for example) as well. The supplement includes one paragon path, four feats, and three magic items for ghost pact warlocks. The powers offered here do a good job of evoking the feel of a ghostly patron, but they don’t make me want to play a warlock in order to use them. I wouldn’t choose this pact for one of my own PCs, and as DM, I wouldn’t really consider it appropriate for heroic PCs (and I feel the same way about WotC’s vestige pact, by the way).

Drawing on the mystique of blood, this supplement presents another alternate pact for D&D 4e warlords. The power structure follows the typical template for a warlock: one at-will power that distinctively exhibits the pact, a special effect when an enemy under your Warlock’s Curse is reduced to 0 hp, and a bunch of thematic powers. Unlike the pacts in the original PH, the pact of the vermin lords provides an extra encounter power as a boon; however, author Stefen Styrsky has tried to balance this by turning off the character’s Warlock’s Curse while the bonus encounter power, The Chosen Victim, is in effect. To evoke the feel of bloodletting, many of the powers feature effects that either require blood pact warlocks to injure themselves or grant bonuses if they choose to do so when using those powers. The supplement includes one paragon path for blood pact warlocks, along with four new feats limited to blood pact warlocks and four new magic items intended especially for blood pact warlocks. As a reader, I cringed occasionally at grammatical mistakes and proofreading oversights (for example, using the noun “knick” where the context calls for the verb “nick”), as well as departures from established D&D 4e stylistic standards. As a player, I don’t have any greater desire to play a blood pact warlock than other pacts; options are always nice, and the various elements capture the blood pact’s flavor well, but nothing here excites me with its character-building possibilities. As a DM, I would probably try to talk a player out of using the blood pact, though I wouldn’t absolutely forbid it; the whole flavor of the thing seems unheroic to me. Overall, I’d say the product accomplishes its goal, but not with excellence, and not in a way that gets me behind the goal in the first place.

The 52 villains presented in the Villainomicon provide ICONS GMs with a steady stream of antagonists for the players’ heroes. Each villain’s writeup includes full game stats, of course, plus origin story and a few (usually three) plot ideas. The story ideas offer many interesting possibilities for super-villain team-ups or three-way fights: villain vs. villain vs. hero. A few of the villains (including the Killer Gamemaster and Skeletron) appear in published ICONS adventures as well, so the additional caper ideas in the Villainomicon can help GMs plot sequels or prequels for those adventures.

Better even than the villains, in my mind, is the short section of new rules, detailing new specialties, new powers, simple frameworks for catastrophes and disasters, and a few rules variants. The success pyramid has already proven to be a popular and successful addition to the core rules.

Sadly, that infamous and stealthy imp, the Grammar Gremlin, seems to have infested the Villainomicon. Little things like misplaced or missing punctuation marks, double dashes used (inconsistently) instead of hyphens, inconsistent capitalization, extra space between sentences, misspellings (“miniturization,” “firey,” “polinated”), “then” used where “than” is needed, and so on add up. It’s also a bit disconcerting when the text descriptions and pictures don’t match, as when the text describes Earworm as “black and gray” but the picture depicts it as green and purple. Also, the cover shown in the product description (as of June 2012, long after publication) isn’t the actual cover; an update to the promotional imagery wouldn’t hurt.

What a great adventure. It's got intrigue, battles, chariot races, airship battles and thrilling action sequence. The interior art is a bit lacking compared to the quality of the cover but certainly conveys the writer's ideas real well.

These terrain tiles are well-conceived in terms of placing elements on the page, but several tiles exhibit a significant variety in art styles, reminding me of tiles composed in Dundjinni using elements from a variety of artists. Take section 2, for example: the hedges cast no shadow at all, the tattered easy chair casts its shadow due north, the couch/divan casts its shadow southwest, and the bathtub casts its shadow northeast—suggesting that the shadows (where they exist) came with the elements themselves rather than being created to fit the scene. The use of PDF layers to allow extra customization is a very nice feature, though, and I think the product is, overall, worth the $3.99 price tag it carries as of this writing. There are flaws, but there are also very few products that fill the same niche, so picking up this tile set and the companion City Tiles 2 is quite worthwhile if you want to use battlemaps in an urban pulp-style game.

That's definitely one of the best soundtracks ever made for a pen & paper RPG!

This book has the distinction of being the first Imperial Age book I bought.

These are optional, alternate occupations for d20 Modern characters. Though the background works for any game.

Not a lot of detailed material, but a lot of material all the same. If you need a list of professions then this a good place to go.

The stats are all d20, but the backgrounds work for any game.

All the Imperial Age books are all well written and features art from the age, either public domain art and paintings as well as some original art. In all cases the art is very evocative of the time and very well done.

The books are all easy to read, with clean layout and font sizes. They can be printed with ease without killing your printer cartridge.

A monster book with more.

Many of the most frightening creatures we know today have their roots in Victorian literature and history. Dracula, Carmilla, Jack the Ripper, Half-human mutants, cults. All can be found in the pages of Victorian origin.

More than just a monster book (though it is that as well), this presents some "history" behind the monster. I am reminded of some the more detailed Monster Hunter guides I have seen for other games.

There is so much here that it is difficult to quantify it all. But there is a lot and a lot of it is very, very good.

The stats are all d20, but the backgrounds work for any game.

All the Imperial Age books are all well written and features art from the age, either public domain art and paintings as well as some original art. In all cases the art is very evocative of the time and very well done.

The books are all easy to read, with clean layout and font sizes. They can be printed with ease without killing your printer cartridge.

Another Penny Dreadful for The Imperial Age.

This one takes advantage of the material found in the London book, so having that on hand is helpful.

It is obvious that the author(s) have learned more about adventure design since "Hell Hath No Fury" since this is a more complex plot and a more detailed adventure (despite being the same size).

A very entertaining adventure that plays to "The Imperial Age's" strengths well.

All the Imperial Age books are all well written and features art from the age, either public domain art and paintings as well as some original art. In all cases the art is very evocative of the time and very well done.

The books are all easy to read, with clean layout and font sizes. They can be printed with ease without killing your printer cartridge.