Writer’s note: I responded to a request to review this item. I received the document free of charge for the review. I tell you this for full disclosure and all that...
Okay, now on to the review.
What it is:
The Other Side is a .pdf you can purchase on RPGnow.com. It is the first of a monthly series of D20 articles that will be released under the title "Minigame Magazine." As such, the The Other Side is the first outing for Minigame magazine… which will apparently run about $6 for the current issue and $5 for back issues.
The Other Side is a generic D20 supplement that highlights the role of the traditional monsters that we all know and love. The focus is mostly on the goblinoids, but there is also discussion of the common bad guy lizard-like races. Basically, The Other Side is an attempt to help fill out the culture and background of the monster races so that they are a playable option.
Overall, I really dig the idea behind The Other Side, but the execution is a bit pedestrian. Ever since Orkworld came out I have been intrigued with playing the other guys- the monsters that normally get beaten upon. I really like the idea of taking the traditional bad guys whose only purpose was to provide xp to PCs and give them a viable and living culture. So, I have been on a bit of a quest to find a setting or book that will do just that for D20. There have been a lot of entries in that field- from Mongoose's Slayers Guides, to Savage Species, to Fast Forward's Green Races, to a number of other products. Some really add some useful tidbits to monster cultures while others do absolutely nothing for the subject. The Other Side falls somewhere just shy of being not-quite-useful.
The art:
Is actually quite good and one of the stronger selling points for this edition of Minigame Magazine. Though there is not a lot of art, those pieces that are there are quite good for a .pdf and very appropriate to the topic at hand.
What’s in it:
The Other Side is a nice sized .pdf product with about 47 or so pages of useable information. The product is broken up into four sections. The first section, the real meat of the product, is the discussion of the races; Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Kobolds, Lizardfolk, Troglodytes, Ogres, Gnolls, and Orcs. Each race gets a couple of paragraphs on their society, a number of paragraphs on domestic issues (intra-racial matters), a paragraph on adventurers from that race, and a few paragraphs on inter-racial relations (broken up into discussing the above races as well as demihumans). This is where the product really could have shined for me, adding useful information and expanding upon the details found in the MM3.5. Sadly, while some of the insights are fun and can help to flesh out the races in question, there really isn't enough to detail any of the races to give them significantly more cultural information than we find in the MM3.5. Too much space, in my opinion, is dedicated to inter-racial issues rather than going in depth on the society of the races. Instead of deep and thoughtful exploration of the racial societies- we get the same broad brush strokes that we got in the MM3.5. Too much effort is dedicated to telling us how the races think about one another, which can be a useful analytical tool, but in this case seems extremely redundant and really should not have been the bulk of each of the entries. I would have really appreciated more information on how the cultures actually work, what social divisions exist and how they interact... what taboos exist and why... how the cultures deal with things like death or birth or intra-racial disputes. Though some of this is covered here and there in different entries, none of it is really covered in any kind of consistent detail. Shame really.
Now, don't me wrong, some of the information is quite useful to helping flesh out the societies of the races- such as the discussion of the Kobold propensity for trap making (and, thus, the reasoning behind all those infernal traps in dungeons), but the document left me really wanting more. There are still a lot of gaps a GM will have to fill to make monster societies believable and vibrant. The Other Side provides a fine outline, but doesn't quite get into the details I was hoping for.
The Second Chapter is all about game stats. While I could do without the racial stats from the MM3.5 being reprinted as they were, the rest of the chapter is quite good. In this chapter you get new skills and feats, new equipment, poisons, PrCs, example NPCs and a new way to use the paladin in monster campaigns. The new exotic weapons seem to fit in nicely with my image of the monsters presented, with a few examples being a bit on the strong side and will need some serious playtesting to ensure game balance (the fangsword, which grants 1 and 1/2 times STR bonus to armored opponents being my major concern). A few example weapons that I liked include the manfisher (used by lizardfolk), the siege ram (a big log used by the big races) and the net launcher (favored by goblins).
I also like the presentation of the PrCs- probably useful to both GMs and players alike. The new PrCs we get are the Gatesmasher (ala' the Trolls from RotK), Infiltrator, the Trapmaster, and my favorite, the Ogre-Rider (a Small race PrC that rides in a howdah on the back of a Large race). Following the PrCs is a discussion of using the Paladin class in a monster campaign. To be honest, I didn't like this treatment of the paladin, which mostly just reversed the paladin's characteristics without a whole lot of explanation as to why (for example, the paladin’s alignment is simply changed to CE… why not LE or NE? LE seems particularly appropriate for an evil Paladin). I really feel there was some room to be really creative in the utilization of the paladin in a monster campaign-and the rules in The Other Side for paladins are simply unremarkable.
One place The Other Side shines is the presentation of six nicely detailed NPCs. I can see using these NPCs in a whole host of campaigns and the background behind them is nice. As a GM, NPCs are always useful and when they are fully statted out and described as they are in The Other Side then so much the better.
The Third chapter is a number of adventure seeds. Some of these seeds are okay, and some just are not my cup of tea. I am not a big fan of bad humor in game speak- and it is too common in this section for me to be a real fan of any of the adventure seeds. To the credit of each of the seeds however, is that each entry has a series of possibilities that can help tailor the adventures to the GM’s group. I like this approach a good deal, helping to ensure that each adventure caters to the desires of each group.
The last chapter is a discussion of roleplaying the races of The Other Side. This is one of the better sections as it helps place potential players in the mindset of not being one of the good guys. Part of the emphasis of this section is to reiterate that the races in The Other Side do not default to the heroic archetypes and that they look at demihuman society in a totally different manner than the Players may be used to. I do strongly disagree with the section's discussion of mixed groups of demihumans and monstrous races- in my opinion they can work just fine if approached with the right mindset (The Other Side basically says "don’t"... and leaves it at that).
Overall:
I think The Other Side is an average product. It doesn't quite complete what it set out to do- in this case, to define monstrous culture in such a way to make them playable. I do think it is a solid product with a couple of nice ideas inside. In the end though, there are a number of other products out there that discuss the same topic and do it in a better fashion. I wish The Other Side would have only discussed one or two races and used the extra space to get into a deeper discussion rather than giving us another general overview. Still, if you are really keen on playing a monster in your next game the advice in chapter four alone may well be worth your money.
