Friday, August 23, 2013

Recession Reviews: Open Gaming Monthly 5

by Frank Gori



Times are hard and while a gaming book beats any trip to the theatre, our loved ones don’t always see it that way. When you can spare the money what products deserve your hard earned gaming dollars? Who balances enough crunch with the fluff to allow the frugal GM to recycle, after all the best games are the ones you can play over and over again without losing interest.

Any who wish to review something in this format should email me a request at theflyingpincushion@gmail.com

Open Gaming Monthly Issue 5 :

d20pfsrd.com Presents: Open Gaming Monthly #5

Written by: Various Authors      

Page count: 99 counting the cover

Throw Away pages: 24 (covers, forward, advertisements, recipe, and fiction not directly useful att he gaming table)

Golden Pages: 71 (reusable npcs, spells, character paths, magic items, monsters, traits, flaws, and solid articles)

Cover price: $2.99 + OGM 2 included for free!

Price per page: $0.03

Modified price per page: $0.02 = Cover price/pages + golden pages – throw away pages= modified price per page, not factoring in OGM#2 gift w/ purchase

Crunch to Fluff Ratio: 4.13 to 1

Our Rating out of 10: 9.5 extremely reusable and useful

Description (minor spoilers): What makes OGM shine aside from the value of its price per page is that there’s always going to be something useful. You might not agree with all the authors or even use 90% of it but you will always get something for your money and usually an entertaining read to boot. Highlights of this issue were the expansions on traits and drawbacks (which really needed the help), the guide to the minotaur, the dragon cemetery, the beastiary, and the magic items.

It is notable that OGM sticks in ads to fill half pages, the editors seem to miss some grammar mistakes, and the art quality ranges from amazing to distractingly bad. Overall you are getting a very good deal so no complaints from me!

***It is notable that I am a contributer to this publication, the review however focuses on the content that I did not contribute. I of course think my article giving GM advice on Sidekicks is amazing but that did not factor into this rating we are merely discussing value for your gaming dollar, aside from freebies this is the best deal in gaming.

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