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The Horizon Striders

Author: Jeff Mackintosh
Category: game
Company/Publisher: XID Creative
Line: Providence
Cost: 16.95
Page count: 135
Capsule Review by Tim Kirk on 02/04/00.
Genre tags: Fantasy Superhero

The Horizon Striders are an organization/guild in the setting of Providence, and I expected like many game companies these days that a book dedicated to an "organization/cult" etc would focus on the organization it's structure and it's members, when I opened up the Horizon Strider book I was pleasantly surprised to find it had left out the NPC's who I will never use, and instead provides more world information, notes on how one's character becomes a Horizon Strider, what they do as a Horizon Strider etc. One flaw I will get right out of the way now is the fact that it doesn't really tell us why. Providence is full of secrets and I feel they may be going over board, but at the same time as a GM, having those secrets left out means I get to answer them for my players. So it isn't all bad.

Rules: Not a lot of rules in general in this book it covers a lot of environmental factors, the need for water for example, some additional traits, and the like. It's really more of a setting/flavor book however so the sparse nature of the rules it provides can be overlooked.

Setting: Here is where the Horizon Strider Book is at its strength. it provides interesting locales to explore, such as Weeping Rock, it provides the sub traditions in the organization that follows a specific leader and grants special abilities based on which of the leaders one follows: These leaders aren't wholly "human" anymore, not that a troupial of any sort could be mistaken for a "human" but these leaders have become more than mere mortal members of their original subraces and becomes something very different, named "Ghost-Walkers" they still are seen from time-to-time some few hundred years after they created the Striders. The only flaw in setting info is the dungeonish maps provided which to me remind me too much of D&D maps from back when I played D&D, and the setting could have been better served by detailing (artistically) a single room instead of showing us a basic map. But that is more a matter of personal taste than anything.

Another book in Providence line that I find great and wonderful, it is a 6"x9" book with 123 or so pages and a reasonable price tag for the amount by which it adds to the game. I don't have a lot to say about Layout it's very similar in design to the Book of Wird (again with those huge sidebar letters telling us the name of the book, sheesh! We know we paid for them!)

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

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