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In Short
Designed for those who want a table ready at hand for any circumstance, Ultimate Toolbox is completely full of random tables. PC background, environment, villains, type of debris, pirate titles, killing blow results, and just about anything else you can think of is covered here. Unfortunately, the material included is left on its own without any thought to when and why random generation can be enjoyable.The Good: Some inspiration can be found here for DMs who are idea starved.
The Bad: It's a very expensive book for the content included. No discussion as to why these tables are helpful is provided. I am skeptical that a GM would constantly refer to this book in play for results, especially considering how mundane the content is.
The Physical Thing
This 400 page black and white softcover showcases below average production values for its $49.95 price tag. The high quality paper stock is oddly used, as this is the sort of book where I would be much less concerned with the beauty of a given page. A mix of artwork occasionally appears, all of it appropriate but none of it doing more than reinforcing a general concept. A picture of a pirate appears by tables covering pirates, a sword by weapons, and so forth.It's worth mentioning that the index is very useful, as it provides a page reference for every table in the book.
Under the Cover
Seven chapters and an appendix, Ultimate Toolbox does an acceptable job of splitting up the random tables. Chapter One focuses on character development, Two on setting creation, Three on city creation, Four on the sea, Five on dungeons, Six on gear, Seven on plot elements, and the Appendix on names and miscellaneous content. Each random table has twenty entries so a single d20 roll can easily allow for a determination, which makes sense since the product is clearly focused on fantasy gaming.Some of these tables can be quite useful. The random name generation, for example, is helpful whether a GM randomly generates the names or just uses the many included names for game support. Lists of titles can aid a GM in spicing up a major NPC, while plot hooks can always be useful when the GM is stumped for an adventure hook. Unfortunately, none of these perks really justifies the extremely high cost of this product. A baby names book will be much more useful for naming NPCs, and there are countless resources available online for any of this material.
Unfortunately, there are many tables of far less use. Randomly generating the taste of a consumed potion is unlikely to come up in a game, for if the matter is ever an issue the GM will hopefully just assign a descriptive flavor rather than pull out a large book, check the index, and then roll on a table. Many, many tables are of this nature. They're neat ideas, but I can not imagine them actually assisting play unless the GM is completely unable to come up with even minor setting details.
Random tables can be very fun in RPGs. One example is character creation in Traveller in which random tables result in an interesting character background. The randomness of character creation in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying can reflect dealing with what fate has dealt you and making the best of it. Even the random treasure tables of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons offered adventurers a certain amount of wonder as no one knew what might be uncovered in a dragon's treasure trove.
The random tables included here, while useful, don't add the setting aspects or wonder that those in other games have provided. The randomness of the tables, combined with how mundane they are, prevent them from being particularly useful at the table unless the GM is willing to slow down a game in return for a fairly mundane entry. Further, this same content can be found all over the internet. Random tables for RPGs of all sorts, random dungeon generators, naming guidelines, plot hooks, and other content is readily available free of cost to any GM so stuck on ideas that they just want to look through random selections. Finally, many of the tables simply aren't useful at all. Randomly determining sea life with entries like “fish, large” and “fish, medium” just doesn't add anything worthwhile to a game.
My Take
At the listed price I can't recommend this product to anyone. Perhaps for substantially less a long list of tables could be worthwhile to a given group, but the existing book suffers from bloat. There are simply too many tables here that should have been excised. Just as a good writing often involves fewer words, not more, a good product should focus in on the most useful content. Finally, the fact that this product offers little, if anything, that a few minutes with Google couldn't provide really highlights how weak the content is.Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
