So, after my review of The Game Crafter website and service, I was approached to look over another site. Who an I to turn down a polite request by a game developer?

Before i begin, I would like to note that while I was asked by the publisher to review the site, I was not in any way given any form of payment or other incentive. There was nothing more than a polite e-mail and my own personal interest involved in this.

The site itself is beautiful to begin with. The first thing you see on the home page is the Battlelords logo and an alternating series of images giving you a feel for the setting of the game line. At the top of the page is a toolbar with links to the rest of the site. There are six options (Home, News, Battlelords, Store, Community, Web Tools), plus a search bar for the site itself. Among the six main many have unobtrusive drop downs of sub-domains of those options. I will go over each main option in detail.

Home

The first link in the toolbar is for the Home page. This, as said before, has some lovely alternating art on it. It is a fairly sparse page in the way of information. Not to say there isn't anything of value, just that the information given on the front is limited to the most important. As of the time of this writing, there is a small link to a featured product (currently a pdf for the Blood Dawn rpg). There is also a text box with three tabs. The main tab is a quick synopsis of the Battlelords game line with a link to other parts of the site. The second tab is for news, with more links to monthly reports. The final tab shows a list of recent forum posts, with more links. There are also buttons to post much of this to Facebook, if you wish to spread the word yourself.

News

The News link on the toolbar takes you to the same page as the news links on the text box on the homepage. The news reports have links to pertinent information. Each of the individual new items has a link to the page containing it (though the entire news item is shown on the page without having to actually visit the individual pages). It is possible to post a comment to any of the news items. As of this time, there are links to a handful of reviews and some new products. There is also a sidebar with links to a Facebook page, recent posts, and recent comments. An odd quirk on this page is that the toolbar changes slightly (and only on this page). On this altered toolbar, the News option has disappeared. Instead, the Home option links to the current page while a new option (SDCC.com) links to the home page. There is also a new link to a Contact Us page, that itself offers an online form to e-mail the company as well as the mailing address and other contact information.

Battlelords

This is the meat of the site. From this page, or any of the numerous drop downs, you can access just about any information on the setting of Battlelords that you could ever want. The default page gives you an overview of the setting of the game, with additional pages telling you the timeline or specific alien races in the setting. There are links to different sections of the wiki covering adventures, faqs, and a glossary. There is also a section for new players, specifically new to rpgs. Each page is easy to read and contains a good deal of information, as well as including links to other related pages. Many of these pages have some great artwork to aid in immersion into the world of Battlelords. There is even an entire page set up as a gallery to showcase the lovely art of the game world. Finally, in this section you can find a page of testimonials from fans and industry folk.

Store

This is just what the link says it is, an online store. There is a drop down for this link, which offer up different areas of the store. These are handy, as they can save time in looking for what you want. There are options for print, pdf, miniatures, a Cafepress page, and any specials currently going on. The individual pages are easy to navigate, with color thumbnails of the products offered. The cart interface is easy to use, and orders are paid for with Paypal.

Individual items have pages of their own, giving you a description of the item with any reviews or extras (like free pdfs) linked. There is also a list of product specs like the price and page count at the bottom of the page. The only real complaint I would have with the store is that the prices for items are not listed unless you go to the individual item's page. It would be nice to know what a something costs without having to go to that item's page first.

Community

Clicking on this link will take you to the hub for the forums. the forums themselves are pretty standard issue. You have a number of different options for discussing different related areas of the game Nothing here that really stands out as needing to be discussed. Forums are forums, for the most part.

Hovering over the link to this page offers up links to either the forums or a wiki page. This is where the community pages shine. The wiki gives you a lot of potential information that can help with the game I feel. You have newbie guides, module tutorials, setting information, and faqs. Which I suppose much of this could be placed in the forums, the wiki approach makes the information much easier to find and access. I would like to see more companies do this.

Web

The Web Tools link takes you to a page that has links to the two online tools the site offers. These can also be found by following the individual links on the drop down found off of the Web Tools link. The tools offered are a Combat Resolver and an Initiative Tracker.

The initiative tracker seems fairly straightforward, allowing you to roll for up to 10 characters. You can change the initiative die between a d6, d10, and d20. There are also options for initiative modifiers (positive and negative). The really nice part of this tool is that, after results are rolled, you can click on the modifier to change it between rounds as needed. There is also the option for taking a character in or out of the fight without having to reset the tool. These are very nice touches, which makes this something useful for nearly any game. I could see myself using this tool for my own games often.

The combat resolver is also a thing of beauty. There are options for the tool to roll for you, you to input your roll yourself, or to roll for grenades. Each option has different possible forms to fill in such as damage, how many rolls to make, or even which weapon you are using. Not having actually played the game, I do not fully understand the significance behind some of the results or portions of the table. What I do understand though is that the roll give you a nice degree of information. The results show up as a figure with boxes representing the areas the could be damaged Each hit (in the case of multiple hits) will have a little bullet hole symbol you can click on to get more information. Clicking on this will tell you the roll you had, the description (which are pretty gruesome on good hits), the actual game effect, medical information (which I assume is something about rolls needed to heal), and the damage result. it is all pretty comprehensive, so I imagine if I knew the game better I would find a lot of use for this. As it is, I have fun rolling and seeing the results anyhow.

Conclusion

Before looking at this site, I had little to no knowledge of this game. I had heard the name Battlelords of the 23rd Century, but never encountered it anywhere. Now that I have seen the site, and how well it is done, I have to admit a bit of new found interest in the game line There is a wealth of information to be had online, with some very useful game enhancing tools. The addition of a wiki and forums on the site make the entire thing very inviting to players new and old. Overall, I would say this is a great site and a game I may have to look into sometime soon.