The Inside Scoop on Gaming

First impressions: At first glance, Perdition's Daughter should not be taken seriously. The artwork of Santa blasting zombies with a pair of matching pistols while Rudolph fires bolts of energy from his nose makes me want to get it as far away as possible. Fortunately for all involved, this is simply a case of poor cover art.

I know a lot of folks don't like soft-cover products, but if it'll keep the price of a decent module at under $5 cover price, I'll gladly take it over, say, a $15+ TSR/WotC supplement. The paper's hearty and seems fairly tear resistant. The copy I recieved arrived during a week of heavy storms and had some water damage. Despite this, it was still in quite functional shape and dried out with only a few rumpled pages.

Content: The introductory story is fairly good. I've read a lot of westerns in my time (couple of hundred easy) and this beats most of them as well as a lot of RPG fiction. The ending is a bit hurried, and needs to be read twice to really understand everything that happened, but all in all it went fairly well.

The module side faired about as well. The intro was well written, with plenty of opportunity for plot hooks. Details abound for the small town setting, from the barbershop to the tailors, it's a wonderful resource for building images of small western towns.

Again, the ending was hurried. Because there are so many possibilities for how the party will handle the situation, there's not much outside the fiction to help Marshall's along. I found it necessary to add a few extra clues to make the opponent's weaknesses known to the party or else they'd have ended up dumping tons of ammunition into their foe without winning. The oddest part is that the players could have won without those flaws being known. I ended up making an alternate ending in those clues that implied mass damage wasn't a good idea.

Evaluation: Good supplement. I've had a few better modules, but a lot that were worse. I still think that Pinnacle needs to put all the relevent character stats in one place, rather than combat stats in one place and basic stats imbedded in the plot. The style's nice, and gains a lot of points due to it's expense, or lack thereof. It makes it very easy to run stories when you can plunk down $5 for a few nights of two-fisted fun. It's even better when the material inside can be pulled out later for use in other stories.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Perdition's Daughter
Author: Fiction:Shane Lacey Hensley Adventure:Hal Mangold Category: game Company/Publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group, Inc. Cost: $4.95 Page count: 78 ISBN: 1-88946-10-0 Playtest Review by James McPherson on 12/14/97. Genre tags: none	First impressions: At first glance, Perdition's Daughter should not be taken seriously. The artwork of Santa blasting zombies with a pair of matching pistols while Rudolph fires bolts of energy from his nose makes me want to get it as far away as possible. Fortunately for all involved, this is simply a case of poor cover art. I know a lot of folks don't like soft-cover products, but if it'll keep the price of a decent module at under $5 cover price, I'll gladly take it over, say, a $15+ TSR/WotC supplement. The paper's hearty and seems fairly tear resistant. The copy I recieved arrived during a week of heavy storms and had some water damage. Despite this, it was still in quite functional shape and dried out with only a few rumpled pages. Content: The introductory story is fairly good. I've read a lot of westerns in my time (couple of hundred easy) and this beats most of them as well as a lot of RPG fiction. The ending is a bit hurried, and needs to be read twice to really understand everything that happened, but all in all it went fairly well. The module side faired about as well. The intro was well written, with plenty of opportunity for plot hooks. Details abound for the small town setting, from the barbershop to the tailors, it's a wonderful resource for building images of small western towns. Again, the ending was hurried. Because there are so many possibilities for how the party will handle the situation, there's not much outside the fiction to help Marshall's along. I found it necessary to add a few extra clues to make the opponent's weaknesses known to the party or else they'd have ended up dumping tons of ammunition into their foe without winning. The oddest part is that the players could have won without those flaws being known. I ended up making an alternate ending in those clues that implied mass damage wasn't a good idea. Evaluation: Good supplement. I've had a few better modules, but a lot that were worse. I still think that Pinnacle needs to put all the relevent character stats in one place, rather than combat stats in one place and basic stats imbedded in the plot. The style's nice, and gains a lot of points due to it's expense, or lack thereof. It makes it very easy to run stories when you can plunk down $5 for a few nights of two-fisted fun. It's even better when the material inside can be pulled out later for use in other stories. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)