Unfortunately, "OGL Ancients" is the most disappointing RPG product I have bought in a long time.

MY ADMISSION OF BIAS
Firstly, I should say that I was looking for a **d20** book more than an OGL book, so that's my own mistake. I have no idea why this was an OGL book, or why Mongoose Publishing decided to go completely OGL. Certainly, aside from a little nudity in the art, and maybe discussions of hallucinogenic drugs (see below), here's nothing "offensive to Wizards' d20 standards" in the book. If there's some copyright/intellectual property reason why they made it OGL, I dunno.

THE PROBLEM WITH MANY OGL BOOKS
The problem is, of course, an OGL book must necessarily pack 3 times as much content as a d20 book. It must reprint ALL the skills, feats, and rules from the Player's Handbook and the DMG, and it must include its own mini-Monster Manual if it knows what's good for it. I don't think there's 1 gamer out of 100 who is going to buy "OGL Ancients" who doesn't already have some version of the 3rd Edition of 3.5 rules, so why make it OGL? Obviously any OGL book must either be a significant revision of the basic rules (like, say, "The End" or "Mutants and Masterminds") or must be as super-detailed and exhaustive as the core 3 books (like, say, the "Everquest" RPG books). What an OGL book should not be is a weak restatement of the same ol' Player's Handbook rules, with just a few new classes and equipment, and almost NO room left over for historical information, treasure, monsters, magic items, etc. etc. etc. -- all the color and flavor and ideas which a book titled "OGL Ancients" SHOULD have.

A weak, WEAK restatement. As an OGL book, "OGL Ancients" totally fails to stand on its own. A reference on page 136 says "See the Diseases section in the Adventuring chapter", but there is no Diseases section in the Adventuring chapter. Elsewhere, text refers to "Craft (Alchemy)", which is not listed among the various Crafts in the skills section. Far more aggravatingly, the text refers to Chimeras, "skeletal gnawers", "bowel-eaters", and other creatures which are not given statistics -- clearly excised, or never even created, for reasons of space. Like the skills, the equipment list is full of inappropriate, flavorless text left over from Wizards' d20 rulebooks (how easy was it to buy silk ropes in ancient Greece, really?). As someone who already owns more than one version of the d20 core rules, I would much rather have a d20 supplement than an OGL supplement which restates all that material.

But aren't there rules changes in "OGL Ancients" which make it necessary for it to be OGL? Yes, there are rules changes which make it difficult to convert the book's stuff to regular d20. However, they have obviously not been thoroughly playtested.

Old D&D rules: You want to hit someone, you roll an Attack roll.

OGL Ancients rules: You want to hit someone, you roll an Attack roll. They roll an Active Defense (or Shield Defense) roll. Then, if they're wearing armor, they make a Coverage roll for the armor, and apply Damage Resistance if the roll succeeds.

Oh-kayyy... One die roll has been turned into 3 die rolls. And high-level fighter-types still get multiple attacks per round. THAT'S BRILLIANT!

As if high-level combat wasn't slow enough already.

Why this change? Let's see... "Armour in OGL Ancients does not make you harder to hit. It only comes into play once you have been hit." Hey, it's the old "Armor Class isn't realistic" argument which was rebutted in the D&D FAQ that was posted by Wizards four years ago when 3rd edition was announced. Never thought I'd see that again.

There are now rules for Decapitation and Hamstringing attacks, as well as Grievous Wounds, all of which are interesting ideas. I don't know if this will turn combat into nothing but an endless succession of Decapitation attempts, but these are some of the good ideas in the book -- I really like the Grievous Wounds system. The Formation Feats are less impressive; they seem to be designed to encourage mass combat, but the aforementioned slowing-down of combat (Attack roll, Active Defense roll, Coverage roll) assures that only the most foolhardy DMs and patient players will run large combat scenes.

OTHER NEW STUFF: SOME GOOD, SOME BAD
The new skill-based spell system leaves much to be desired -- there are no "levels", and Egyptian and Greek priests and witches all cast from the same pool of available spells. As with the Armor Class thing, what we have here is someone reinventing the wheel and not taking advantage of the strengths of the d20 system. I'm not a d20 maniac -- I've played & loved "Call of Cthulhu", "Kult", "Dying Earth", White Wolf games, "Shadowrun", "Godlike" and tons of other systems -- but the d20 system and D&D are optimized for a certain type of heroic fantasy. (But like I said, I was hoping "OGL Ancients" would be a book I could use in a d20 campaign, so I'm biased. Sorry.) The magic rules at least provide some of the best flavor material, with rules on sacrifices (which, however, don't give players any in-game advantages) and things like "Impressive Prayer", which rewards players for role-playing as they beseech the gods for aid.

Among the new classes, the "Seer", who can prophesize and curse people, is the most interesting. There are extensive rules on how "Artificers" can create mechanical marvels, which are sort of interesting. The rules for playing a dead Egyptian character (a ka spirit) are unique and might be fun to play.

The ideas of divine bloodlines, etc., are interesting but could have been expanded further. For an example, look at how much mileage Wizards gets out of the idea of human-crossbreed bloodlines for different races in "Unearthed Arcana". It would have been nice, for instance, to have something between "Total Invulnerability" (which confers a 30-point DR) and nothing. Maybe something like just a little bit of Invulnerability for lower-level characters?

There is a section on alternate level advancement which includes the option "Level Advancement by GM Fiat". Huh. Isn't the point of rules so that everything isn't by GM fiat?

ARTWORK & DESIGN
The art is inconsistent: some good, some bad. I don't know why this book is in color. Color interior printing jacks the production costs up hugely (plus you have to pay the artists more to do color work): why isn't it just nice, money-saving B&W artwork? For that matter, why are the pictures of the Greek & Egyptian gods printed BEHIND the text describing them, so you can hardly see them? The pictures aren't so bad that they'd want to hide them (well, the Greek ones are kind of bad, but the Egyptian ones are good). Did they run out of space/money that badly that they needed to save 8-16 pages by not using the space for the pictures?!? Another glaring omission is the lack of pictures (let alone clearly labelled pictures) of most of the new weapons and armor described in the equipment section.

The character sheets are poorly designed: a huge Egyptian symbol, in color, covers most of the middle of the page. Did it ever occur to the designers that this symbol would turn into dark grey when photocopied and make it difficult to see what's written on the character sheets?

HISTORICAL CONTENT & BACKGROUND
As for the historical content: if I wanted a RPG book about the ancient Greeks and Egyptians (with a few paragraphs of info on each of the other cultures), I would buy a book titled "OGL Greeks and Egyptians." In a book titled "OGL Ancients" I WANT, I EXPECT at least a page or two each on the Hittites, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Phoenicians and all those other weirdos. I CRAVE juicy, well-written background material so I don't have to check out a million history books from the library before I start a campaign. Other reviewers have noted that this book doesn't have an index; I should add that it doesn't have a bibliography either.

Even the Greek and Egyptian worlds are not given enough description. I want descriptions of towns and places and the locations of famous battles, both historical and mythical. (There is a nice map on the inside covers, but not enough description in the book itself.) I want descriptions of daily life and professions and local customs and types of government and food and native plants and animals and other things which the people of that time would take for granted. I want more than a pathetic dozen Greek & Egyptian monsters listed in the back of the book. I want in-depth description on the gods and the beliefs about the afterlife -- descriptions which are LONGER and MORE DETAILED than the descriptions in the 3rd edition DEITIES & DEMIGODS. I don't want to hear stuff like "Although there is a form of Set who is benign, this game is only concerned with the Set who represented destruction and bestial instincts to the Ancient Egyptians." What!? There's a form of Set who's benign?! Can't the writer at least be bothered to write down a list of intriguing variant interpretations of major, campaign-changing things like this? Who's supposed to be writing this book? Me, at the library checking out books on Greece & Egypt, or the frickin' author?!

The list of what ISN'T in this book goes on and on. There is no section on how to create adventures and campaigns in this setting, or how to turn stories from classic myths into RPG scenarios. There are no statistics for legendary heroes and villains. There are no guidelines given for running a RPG somewhere between "historic-realistic" and "mythical", where the gods have slightly less influence but heroes, magic and monsters (in the traditional RPG style) remain. Lastly, there are almost now ideas on how the extremely different pantheons and worldviews of the Greeks and Egyptians could be made to work together in a campaign. A campaign world where the Greek and Egyptian gods interacted -- wow! That'd be cool! Too bad that campaign world's not "OGL Ancients"!

There's a line in the section on "herbs" which epitomizes the lazy writing in this book. The "herb list", which is interesting, lists "Healing Herbs", "Poisonous Herbs", etc., but doesn't actually list the names of the herbs. To quote: "Although to do so would be more historically authentic, we feel that giving the actual names of such things as hallucinogenic herbs might encourage people to experiment, so we refrain from doing so on the grounds of social responsibility."

How about: "Although to do so might be just, I feel that giving the actual names of lazy, moralizing RPG writers might encourage people to publicly ridicule them." I don't know which option is more pathetic: that a RPG writer would cop out of their research this way, or that a RPG writer would SINCERELY not list the names of drug-like plants "on the grounds of social responsibility". So it's okay to have pictures of bare-breasted Greek maidens, but not to have lists of hallucinogenic plants whose modern equivalents people can look up on the Internet anyway? WTF? For the record, I am totally straightedge and have never used drugs. But obviously "OGL Ancients" is not an OGL book out of desire to use offensive stuff which Wizards won't allow in a d20 book.

IN CONCLUSION
Anyways... uh... did I mention I was disappointed by this book? Too much regurgitated OGL content, too little background material (and new material altogether), poor rules changes, bad writing, and a bad design decision to do the interior of the book in color.

Let's break it down... Wizards' "Deities & Demigods" ($29.95) has 28 pages devoted to the Egyptian pantheon and 34 pages devoted to the Greek pantheon. "OGL Ancients" ($39.95) has about 20 pages devoted to both, total, not counting material on god-related feats and such scattered throughout the book. I can't imagine why anyone would buy a book like "OGL Ancients" when books of higher quality are available from the first-party publisher. As for me, I'm going to return "OGL Ancients" to the game store and run my "historical d20 campaign" using "Deities & Demigods" and the Egyptian material in "Testament". And a lot of trips to the library.

Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.