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Discovering Dusters is a softcover supplement for the fantasy RPG Undiscovered, which I reviewed a long time ago here. "Dusters" are one of the primary races in Undiscovered, and this supplement goes over them in a lot more detail than the main rulebook. They're basically humanoids with some ability to shapeshift into snakes and winged reptiles.
First, the basics. Discovering Dusters is an 80-page softcover supplement with a color cover and a black & white interior. Retail price is $14.95. Production values are good; not on the level of one of the big companies like White Wolf or WotC, but not as crappy as the low end of RPGs. The art (mostly grayscale pencil illustrations) is a little uneven... there are some very good pics and a few so-so ones, but overall the quality is good and the art is nice. There aren't any really bad pics at all. The interior is dense; there's not a lot of wasted space here. So overall, the physical appearance of the book is good. I do really like the abstract animal illustrations in the back for the Totem Animals. These are quite well done and very appropriate to the subject matter, moreso than a realistic illustration of the animal would have been.
Now for the contents: Discovering Dusters opens up with the ancient origins of the duster race, back when the gods were still creating species and populating the planet. It also covers how the variant race of desert dusters were created by mixing the bloodlines of regular dusters (thereafter known as plains dusters) and the dragon-like dracomenscs. Interestingly, they have an explanation for the existence of various half-human crossbreeds in the setting... the gods were distressed by the first experiments in interbreeding the intelligent races and cast spells to prevent it from working in the future. Humans, however, were created much later by a different deity, and are not bound by that restriction.
The subraces here include half-breeds of both types of dusters and dravers... basically humans with a small amount of duster blood. While dravers lack the shapeshifting powers of the other breeds, they have developed a secret method for crafting crystalline weapons which helps balance them out.
Then we get 9 pages on the duster society, including descriptions of their lifestyle, customs, religious beliefs, holy days and various rites of passage. We even get two pages of the duster runic language, with pictures, pronunciations and definitions of each word. Finally, this section includes a writeup of their basic mythology (the Sun, for example, races across the sky because it's the god Heuhuetotl who caught himself on fire and is trying to put himself out). It looks like most of the names were taken from the Aztec religion... for example, dusters refer to the god Kronos (described in the original rulebook) as Quetzacoatl and Gwydion (god of knowledge) as Xipe Totec.
That last one seems pretty odd, considering that Xipe Totec wasn't associated with knowledge or wisdom as far as I know... he was god of the changing seasons and wore the flayed skin of those sacrificed to him (the Aztecs didn't have very nice deities). So it seems like the names that they picked were a pretty poor fit for the deities they were matching them up to, in my opinion. If your players are familiar with Aztec mythology, they may find these names awkward to use, but I'm sure you could just use the regular deity names instead.
We also get 5 new "organizations" for Undiscovered. These are basically special tribal positions that you can take, each of which has certain requirements but grants certain skills and bonuses, too. For example, a Tribal Warrior has to take a number of weapon skills and the Group Fighting skill and cannot take Writing/Scribing (because that's reserved for Tribal Shamans). In return, they get some more skills and free training. I wish they'd gone into more detail about the background of the Chulan Assassins and how they are organized, but we just get the organization writeup. Since they're descended from an ancient hero of the desert dusters (and one of the very first of their kind), you'd expect them to be written up in more detail than just some stats, but they aren't.
Finally, at least as far as dusters go, we get example writeups of two tribes: the Crow Tribe and the Scorpion Tribe. This includes stats for tribal leaders and example members, descriptions of what the tribes are like and a breakdown of their membership (how many warriors, kids, elderly, etc.).
After all of the duster-specific material, we get the "bonus feature" of Shaman Skills. Of course, the book arguably should be "Shaman Skills with Bonus Feature: Discovering Dusters" because the section on Shaman Skills is 48 pages whereas the duster-specific material is only 32 pages. But that's not really important, since Shamans are really important to dusters so they'll make the most use of it. But barbaric humans, muklags and other tribal cultures often have them too.
Discovering Dusters gives us 9 additional divine skills which are only available to shaman who follow a totem animal instead of a deity. But they're pretty cool and range from stuff like Sight of the Eagle (which can enable you to see extreme details even at a range of 1000 feet and see clearly for 10 miles) to Wind Walk (you travel as an intangible breeze up at a rate of up to 5000 feet per round) to summoning demons or elementals. The high level miracles are quite powerful. The top level of Dread, for example, can paralyze one target for up to 15 rounds. A particularly cute one is the Spirit Miracle of Decaying Touch, which causes the target's maximum life points to slowly dwindle at the rate of 1 point every two days until cured by a healing miracle. If there's no miracle available, you slowly waste away and die.
Shaman also get 4 new skills: Shaman Dreams (giving magical benefits or detriments to folks through a symbolic dream), Shamanic Chant (granting bonuses to all friends within 25 feet by chanting for an hour), Tattoo Rites (boosting your stats via a magical tattoo that slowly grows as you gain levels) and Charm Crafting (making a limited-use gizmo out of a fallen foe that grants the user some of their skills, spells, and/or attribute ratings). That last one goes a long way to explaining why the dusters have a habit of sacrificing captured enemies to their deities... the deceased can't have died more than a day ago, or the ritual to craft a charm from their corpse will fail.
Shaman Dreams is probably the most flexible of all these abilities. It also has an interesting writeup of exactly what sort of symbols you can incorporate into the ritual, covering the meanings of various colors, herbs and symbols. For instance, burning a pale green candle as part of the preparatory ritual is useful for producing effects involving empathy, sympathy or weakness in a target. While Shaman Dreams can be used to produce stat or skill adjustments, the real flexibility lies in influencing the subject's personality, filling them with feelings of love, jealousy, greed, etc.. It can also be used as a form of astral travel. I particularly like the color/herb/symbol writeups... while they don't really influence the game effects, they really add a lot of color to the power.
Finally, we get 18 pages of Totem Animals. A Shaman can't actually pick which totem animal they get... the spirit chooses them, in the form of a percentile roll on a big chart. If the totem rolled doesn't match the character or if the animal in question isn't found in an appropriate area, you just roll again.
For each possible totem animal, your skill rating determines what benefits you get from them. For example, at the Initiate level, Goat grants +5% to skills used when you're alone. Novice lets you select an additional miracle group above what your Charm score would normally allow. Adept gives you a +15% bonus to the Balance skill. Expert makes you immune to blind-siding in melee. Finally, the Master level cuts the damage and duration of all poisons that affect you in half.
Basically, each totem animal is a set of five powers that you get in order as you get better at invoking it. The powers are quite arbitrary and many of them are just bonuses to a particular stat or skill, but there are some cute ones. Expert Grasshopper makes your character taste so bad that predators that bite you will spit you out and no longer consider you edible. Master level Hippopotamus lets you take the form of a giant hippo briefly and trample your foes. Master level Rabbit can turn into a rabbit once per day for as long as they want... not always a really useful power for an adventurer, but kind of nifty.
With all of the different animals here, you'll have a huge set of available powers... you just won't get to pick the one you want unless your GM is particularly lenient or your character concept makes only one animal appropriate. The example shaman in the Scorpion Tribe, for example, has Scorpion as her totem animal... it would be pretty odd if she didn't.
So, overall, is Discovering Dusters worth it? Well, it's a little short (only 80 pages, softcover), but it's also only $14.95, which isn't bad for supplement these days. The quality is very high (so far almost all of the Eilfin products have managed to surprise me with how professional and well-done they look). If you're interested in more detail about dusters, it's useful, but if you were interested in doing a spirit-oriented shaman, it's essential. The shaman powers are particularly nifty and have a really nice "feel" to them. They just seem more like spirit miracles than regular spells.
So overall I'd give it a 4 for substance and a 4 for style. It could probably have had more detail on dusters (like how they envision the various deities or what sort of organization the Chulan Assassins have), but it's nice anyway. If you play Undiscovered, I'd give it a serious look, especially for the shaman skills.
The company's website is at http://www.eilfin.com. Check it out.
