Okay, I'll admit it. I'm not the world's biggest d20 fan. I wanted to get that out in the open straight away so that people know that I am aware of my possible bias. I like D&D3e - heck I'm currently playing in two D&D games at the moment, and loving at least one of them. (But that is a long story that has nothing to do with this review.)
So why review these books? Well, I don't hate d20 games, and these supplements looked as though they might be useful for the current campaign that our current level 15 party is involved in. With that in mind I agreed to look them over and give as non-biased a review as I could. As some of you may have already guessed by now, I wasn't particularly impressed with the Aerial Adventure series. My complaints, however, have nothing to do with it being a d20 supplement. Rather they are to do with it not being a particularly good d20 supplement.
What is it?
Firstly, I'll clarify what exactly Rulers of the Sky is meant to be. The Aerial Adventure Guides - of which there are three volumes in total - are essentially stand-alone sourcebooks that contain new rules for D&D3e players wanting to take their adventures into the sky. The book claims "These stand-alone sourcebooks contain new character options, races, monsters, feats, items and adventure ideas, plus aerial combat rules and skyship design guidelines." It goes on to mention that these can be integrated into any fantasy campaign - although the rules are for d20 fantasy games.
The first volume provides an overview of the default fantasy "sky realms", new races, new prestige classes, new feats, the aerial combat rules and skyship design guidelines. (Note that the word guidelines will be very important later on...)
Presentation
Before I go onto the actual contents, I'll quickly detail how the book is presented. The layout is very simple. On the cover is an okay picture of a floating city with sky ships docking. The interior art is pretty hokey. Some of it is okay, better than some homebrew gamebooks I've seen on the shelves, but it still smacks of "I have a friend who's an artist and can illustrate this for us."
Text is laid out in a formulaic two column spread that is kept throughout the book. Headings and white space are effectively used however - so the book is fairly easy to read. Unfortunately chapters aren't clearly divided and sometimes this can lead to confusing segments that run into each other.
Ideas versus Detail
Now for the part you're reading this review for. Is Rulers of the Sky any good? To quote an ancient television sage, I can sum up my feelings in one sentence. "Where's the Beef?"
I felt that there was a good idea being formed here, but it was never really developed properly. The basic setting is provided, that of realms being built on the back of clouds that enter the world via the planes of Air. The races are fairly uninspiring - Sky elves, Avians (Birdmen) and Arachial (Spiderpeople). The problem with the Arachial is that they really aren't PC characters, so why even make a racial template? They are fairly standard run of the mill races - even with the whole idea of spiders in the sky.
But where the book really falls down is the rules. Two setting specific prestige classes that are, quite frankly, dull. Air Knights - who are basically like flying paladins/rangers of a sort; and Sky Elf Battle Captains - who again seem a little uninteresting, though they get a couple of nice special abilities.
The New feats fit on two pages. After reading through them I realised that most players would really only want maybe one or two. Most of the feats just didn't seem of any use outside of the Sky Realm setting - of which you'd need to buy the other two supplements. None of the feats really leap out and say "spend your feat slot on me!"
Next up are the Aerial Combat rules. These are okay, but remarkably sparse. I showed them to the GM of our current campaign and he said that they didn't inspire him at all. I find myself in agreement. Essentially it allows for changes to the standard Maneuverability rules - and also an interesting mechanic to represent the swooping and turning during aerial combat. However this mechanic makes combat slow down as players have to make ride checks at the beginning of each round. Combined with initiative this could be a little confusing.
Following the combat rules is a description of Sky Ships. Guess what. They're ships that fly in the sky. Wow. Admittedly there are some useful tables and rules about using sky ships in combat, and I did like these. What I didn't like was the eight paragraph "designing ships" section that essentially boiled down to "make it up." I would have preferred actual design rules rather than extremely loose guidelines and two ship write-ups that don't really help develop this any further.
Finally there is a segment on monsters. This seems kind of tacked on and there is even a rather pointless "Other monsters of the sky" listing by challenge rating."
Summary
Maybe I was a bit too harsh on Rulers of the Sky because I had been hoping for some really cool feats that my PC could take in our campaign. Or maybe I wanted something that was more fleshed out. In the end the book came across to me as something that could have been written in a week and then thrown to the printers. It failed to provide any inspiration for our game, the feats and classes do not work for any fantasy setting - in fact the whole book really seems to only focus on its own "Fantasy Sky Realms by the Numbers" setting. I really feel that an opportunity was overlooked here. Firstly - the book should have been bigger. Secondly - it should have been more generic with a lot more though put into races, feats and classes. The combat section was okay, but instead of introducing a new roll/check something else should have been considered. Maybe making maneuverability add to initiative or something like that.
As I said before, this book lacks in meat. At $11 I guess it's okay - in NZ prices this comes to around $22. I would only pay about $15-18 NZ for it personally. Hopefully Goodman Games next attempt will be of better value and quality.
Should I buy it?: If you have the spare money in your pocket, its better than buying Pokemon Junior. But not better then buying Pokethulu for you and all your friends.
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