I have had a little trouble trying to figure out how to really review this "book" fairly. On one side - it's really a pointless product on its own. Why would anyone want to buy what is essentially a very stereotypical evil fantasy race? On the other hand this is a cheap book and fairly well written.
Basically it came down to my going over to actually look at the website for Sprawling Shadows - the fantasy setting that is being developed by publisher's Grell Head Studios. Upon looking over their plans for the line I came to realise what the real purpose of Evil Race: The Grimmock is. Essentially Grell Head have chosen that rather than e-publish a 300 page PDF file, they would release the Sprawling Shadows book as a series of mini-PDFs that slowly unravel their setting. With this in mind I sat down and re-read the booklet.
Graphic Design
Evil Race: The Grimmock has a fairly reasonable graphic layout - the use of pictures and columns is clean and easy to read. I find this to be of utmost importance especially when reading PDFs, and it did help keep me from lowering the "style" score to 2. Why? Because in all honesty the artwork in this PDF is awful.
However given that this is a third party publication, and as I said earlier the layout was easy on the eye, I was able to overlook this fact. Also the simple reality that anything I could draw would be either on par or worse meant that I can criticise a small publication like this. If it were a larger company who could afford a decent artist I definitely would have been harsher...
So what's in it?
Getting to the point here,
Grimmock is essentially 6 pages of information detailing one of the core evil races from the Sprawling Shadows line. That's right. Three out of the nine pages are committed to game license and credits - leaving six out of nine to actually detail the race.
The style of writing is easy to read and there aren't any blatant editing issues. Unfortunately there's just not enough here. As a product on it's own, it lacks enough information about Grimmocks. Sure, they are rather stereotyped - essentially the Grimmocks are an evil race spawned from a demon corrupting a human hero. Most Grimmocks have no soul at all - they are pure evil. But some are corrupted versions of the other five races: Human, Elf, Gnome, Halfling and Dwarf.
The bonuses each gets is rather weak - there is very little logical reason that I can see for anyone wanting to play a Grimmock, even in an evil campaign. As villains - well Grimmock PCs are no more frightening than orcs to be honest. I get the impression that Brian was unintentionally inspired by the Morlocks from H.G. Wells' Time Machine - there are a few similarities between Grimmocks and Morlocks.
Another problem lies in that there is no more stated about the Grimmocks than one would find about the other races in the PHB. There really needed to be more detail about the life of a Grimmock - more about them as a race. What is provided is so stereotyped most of it could have just been inferred by readers just from reading the basic creature description. There is also no attempt to provide CR based Grimmock characters for a DM to use "from the box" so to speak.
Conclusion
Grell Head Studios should have produced a synopsis overview of their entire setting first. Releasing a race without a sufficient world to back them up is a dangerous move. However with the low cost of purchase, many may want to pcik up the book so as to have a race that is a little different from what is published in D&D3e.
I find it hard to really say too much about this product - there just wasn't that much to it. I do get the feeling that there is a great little fantasy setting hiding in the background there, the history of the Grimmocks hints at a very interesting and involved setting. But the book never convinces the reader that this world really exists. As a singular supplement it simply can't stand on its own - it needs the back up of a real setting book, which is still in development.
For those who are interested in finding a new and fresh D&D setting, I'd suggest that you keep an ey on Grell Head Studio's Website and wait for more to be released. The only use this book currently has is to provide yet another race to the growing number of third-party races, and yet another race that lacks any character or depth.
Hopefully the next few supplements will help to build up the setting and the races...
Should I buy it?: At .99cents its a reasonable price - although I'm not sure how many people are willing to spend only 99cents via net. If you are a big D&D3e fan, you have't got much to lose and might find some of the history section inspirational...
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