While some of the stats and descriptive text provided for each race are (openly) adapted directly from the SRD, the “cultural” descriptions are original, enjoyable and clever, putting each race into a larger context with the others while elaborating on what they’re actually like--their “national characters,” if you will. So, for example, we get the complicated relationship between goblins and others (hobgoblins bully goblins, but it’s all because they care; goblins hate and resent hobgoblins; bugbears encourage kobolds in their rivalry with goblins, but only as a way to push goblins to improve themselves), or the delightful image of kobolds as the go-to guys trapping your dungeon--kobolds as goblinoid tech support! And orcs are given a cultural basis for their hatred of most other races, in their belief that everything in the world, from physical objects to intangible ideas, was stolen from them by those other races. Hence, everything that exists already belongs to them, and they’ve got every right to try to grab it back when practical. As parts of these descriptions, we also get rationales for adventuring goblinoids. An orc, for example, who has accomplished something notable might seek a father to claim him (as achievement is usually the only reason orc fathers, usually not part of the child’s upbringing, would claim the child). A chart provides Equivalent Character Levels to aid the integration of goblinoid characters into parties of more standard adventurers, indicating what level characters the goblinoid will mesh best with--if only in terms of level. A hungry gnoll character, after all, will be a problematic party member at best.

New specific crunch is also provided: there are goblinoid-appropriate but adaptable skills such as Craft (poison) and a new use for Diplomacy--adjusting the price of a business transaction--and feats such as Pillar of Society, which allows a character’s known honorability to help him or her in bartering; Runt, which improves Armor Class and helps a character’s wounds stabilize more easily; and Shrewd Bargainer, which allows a character to use Intimidate in place of a Diplomacy check. We also get exotic weapons such as the flinghook and the gherron, poisons with names such as bard’s tongue leaf and dry-choke juice, and new prestige classes such as the Gatesmasher (for Large-sized characters), the Infiltrator (for magic-assisted spying on the demihumans) and the Trapmaster (for stocking your dungeons with properly deadly traps). In addition, an alternate goblinoid version of the Paladin is offered as a standard class: this paladin is chaotic evil instead of lawful good, inflicts damage instead of healing it when he or she “lays on hands,” causes disease instead of removing it--yep, it’s the Anti-Paladin, pretty much.

Finally, we get some serviceable NPCs (a kobold trapmaster, a troglodyte ranger, and so forth) and adventure seeds--You’ve got to do something about this false divine messenger preaching peace! That magic sword you looted from those dead adventurers wants you to go fulfill its Special Purpose!--and the magazine finishes up with a section of advice to the GM, which furnishes some insight into goblinoids’ motivation to evil (portraying it as their understandable sense of how the world works, rather than any special opposition to ideals of Goodness).

So there’s certainly plenty of meat here. Style is, unfortunately, a slight issue, if not an overly distracting one: although The Other Side’s layout is clear and attractive, there are numerous typos throughout the work, and a paragraph on page 47 simply cuts off mid-sentence. A little more editing would definitely have helped. But aside from that, The Other Side is fun and readable, presenting ideas for the use of goblinoids which, in any campaign, will help transform them from the mooks they are generally presented as into believeable, if somewhat tongue-in-cheek, members of fleshed-out cultures.

The Other Side is available at http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2634&