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The Secret of Zir'an Fate Screen

In Short

This is a GM Screen, a fold out three panel high quality paper stock item that is often used to block notes and die rolls from the eyes of players while the GM runs the game. On the side facing outwards is a simple black and white rune, while the side facing the GM contains many helpful tables to speed up play.

The Physical Thing

The Secret of Zir'an Fate Screen is a high quality paper stock three panel screen retailing for $5.99. It is slightly smaller than other screens, but this is intentional so that it does not disrupt the GM's view of the players while still serving it's function as a reference and hiding device.

The outside has glossy finish to it which makes it look nice, and while it is not as robust as some of the recent screens White Wolf has been putting out it's still quite sturdy. I have dropped mine several times, put it in bags, and placed fifty pounds of books on it and it still appears brand new.

The Ideas

The majority of the screen is dedicated to combat. It includes tables showing the speed costs of movement and various combat actions. Its lists the cost to perform combat Finesse effects with different weapons. The entire combat round is neatly summarized.

It also includes stats for average NPCs of various types, which is incredibly useful when the GM just wants to create an NPC on the fly. A list of object hardness is also included for ease in determining whether that shotgun can breach the bronze statute a character is hiding behind.

Non combat aspects of Zir'an are included as well. There is a handy weather creation chart, a list of the Zir'an names for the days of the week (they're named aver the gods), and a simple almanac covering the seasons and moons.

The screen also includes a secret decoder wheel which, when attached, allows a person to decode secret messages found in the other Zir'an products.

My Take

For six bucks this is hard to beat. It's very useful in a Zir'an campaign, pretty to look at, and generally high quality. My only gripe about it is that you have to manually attach the decoder wheel. I would have been willing to pay a bit more to have a nicer looking decoder wheel preattached to the product.

While I don't use it to obscure die rolls and such, i've found it to be a handy reference tool that I wouldn't want to be without when starting up a combat in Zir'an.