Kingbeast's Lair

-== What is it? ==-

Points Of Light is a system free setting book that includes four fantasy realms that can be used in a campaign. It was written by Robert Conley and Dwayne Gillingham. The publisher is Goodman Games. Points Of Light was released in September 2008.

The book has a color cover and an entirely black and white interior. Points Of Light is 8.5? x 11? and is 48 pages in length. There is not a table of contents but there is a 2 page index. There is also a 1 page ad at the end of Points Of Light. I am reviewing a print copy that I purchased. I have not utilized the material in my campaign at this point (i.e. I have only read the book).

-== What I Like ==-

My favorite aspect of Points Of Light was the flavor of the four settings. The settings include:

• Wildland – A setting with barbarian tribes.
• Southlands – A wilderness frontier.
• Borderland – A realm where two factions fight.
• Swamps of Acheron – A romp to to an outer plane.

This setting book is really suited for newbies or experienced GM who are looking for additional material for their games. I liked the level of detail in Point Of Light. The detail is intentionally left a bit sparse so the GM can fill in with their own material.

My favorite of the four setting in Points Of Light is the Swamps Of Acheron. Without giving away too much the pillars seems like they would be ripe for adventure.

The cover art by Craig Maher is vibrant and eye catching. The interior work on Points Of Light by Britt Martin is also evocative. The shading of the interior illustrations give the book a rich feel that I enjoyed. The layout is not too dark and is not distracting.

-== What I Don’t Like ==-

Probably my biggest complaint with Points Of Light is that there is really nothing new or “cool” in the provided settings. In my opinion it provided a lot more of the same stuff that you find in other fantasy setting products.

I found the maps in Points Of Light to be fair at best. They are very simplistic but surprisingly hard to read. Inset maps that are occasionally provided are teeny tiny. The author, Robert Conley, did the maps but maybe he should have had someone else do them. I was also surprised to find no player maps in the product. While researching Points Of Light online I found out that you can download player maps from Goodman Games. 😉

The lack of a table of contents is a slight drawback. To make matters worse the index has repeats and has all of the settings combined in one list. Thus if you want to find something in a particular setting you have to go through a list of entries from all settings. A better approach might have been to have each section have their own smaller index. To put it simply the index in Points Of Light feels like a rushed afterthought.

-== Summary ==-

Points Of Light might be valuable if you are a newer GM looking for inspiration or if you are looking for an area to drop directly into an existing campaign. Frankly I do not see a lot of value in this product. The cover price is great at a low $12.99.

You can get a copy of Points Of Light at Amazon for $12.99 at this URL. Noble Knights has copies for $10 at this URL. You can get the PDF at this DriveThruRPG URL for a paltry $5.99.

I give it 4 out of 10 paws.

Summary

Doesn’t everyone love reading about product awards!?! Well at least I do. Thus I decided it was time to start my own yearly awards event. For lack of a better name I will call it the Lair Awards. (If anyone can come up with a better name that would be great…and no…”The Beasties” is out. 😉 )

Here is how the Lair Awards will work. There will be three categories: Best Anime, Best Read, and Best RPG. To be eligible for an award the product must have been reviewed in the last calendar year by me on the blog. There were a TON of great products released last year but if I did not review them they don’t count. Also note that I often review products that are quite old. A product is eligible for an award if I reviewed it in 2010…period…it does not matter when the product was actually released. 😉

NOW…on to the 2010 Lair Awards! 😀

Best Anime – Batman: Gotham Knight

The anime award came down to a two product race between two 10 out of 10 releases with colons in their names…namely Batman: Gotham Knight and Highlander: The Search For Vengeance. Batman: Gotham Knight took the edge with its powerful images, masterful storytelling, and varied art styles. The image of Batman holding a pile of guns staring up out of the sewers from the 5th story, Working Through Pain, is iconic. That single shot will stick with me for quite some time.

Best Read – Pluto

The award for Best Read was the easiest to select. I read and reviewed the fantastic manga called Pluto by Osamu Tezuka and Naoki Urasawa. The storytelling is visionary and the character artwork is detailed, fluid, and real. The robot police office Gesicht is deep and rich. This is one hell of a manga series.

Best RPG – The Esoterror Factbook

This award was by far the hardest to select. Four products tied this year with 9 out of 10 reviews. I gave 9 out of 10 reviews to Savage Worlds: Explorer’s Edition, The Ghostbusters RPG, Busytown: Eye Found It!, and the The Esoterror Factbook. I went back and reread the reviews, thought about the products, then decided that the The Esoterror Factbook supplement was slightly ahead of the rest. That’s right…a supplement is taking the award. I think reason this product gets the nod is due to the fact that it does what every game supplement tries to do…it tries to make the product it is supporting better. The Esoterror Factbook does that in so many ways. As I mentioned in the Summary at the end of the review, “If you are going to buy The Esoterrorists save your money until you can both the main rulebook AND this one.”

That wraps up the 2010 Lair Awards! See ya next year! 😀

I updated the Spirit Storm 6e material by making the following changes. Enjoy!

• Very minor tweak to the history section regarding the Spirit War to align with the current campaign.
• Added Killer Whale Kin.
• Added Shark Kin.
• Fixed the entry for Spear.
• Added page numbers.