Fading Suns is easily one of my favorite games, and I devour the supplements that Holistic Design puts out for it. To my disappointment, however, I have to say that some of the more recent supplements have dipped in quality. The release of the
second edition and the first two
Imperial Surveys (
Hawkwood Fiefs and
al-Malik Fiefs, respectively) were high-points, but other supplements like
War in the Heavens: Lifeweb and
Legions of the Empire were terribly disappointing.
Complete Pandemonium and Gamemaster's Screen is a mixed-bag in some ways. It is not a wonderful product, but it doesn't have the glaring disappointments of some other books - if you are looking for information on Pandemonium, then it has some use as a skeleton to hang details on, otherwise it is of little use.
some like it hot
There are two parts to this product, the screen and the pamphlet for Pandemonium. The latter holds information on Pandemonium (laid out in the same format as the Imperial Surveys and just about as detailed) although the emphasis is more on locations and geography than on history, since the general history has been detailed in both editions of the basic rulebook. It does well enough in that regard, providing the best map of a Known World that HDI has yet put out, as well as a fair number of nebulous plot hooks, as well as some notable NPCs and creatures of the world. There are also two adventures included in the 32 page booklet, and they work well enough on the whole. The first, "Everlight" is okay, although it doesn't realize it's full potential and has some extraneous details that are not explained or explored well enough, at least not to my tastes. The second adventure, "A Healing Draught," is much better and has a much more compelling plot and set-up, although it is completely and un-abashedly supernatural, and may not be appropriate for all games. I certainly did enjoy the mythic emphasis on the Virtues and Sins of the Church as well as the Grail symbolism.
The screen, on the other hand, is a larger disappointment and the main reason why this is really only worth buying for those running long-term chronicles on Pandemonium. While it fulfills the basic necessities of a screen (gathering all of the useful charts for running the game), it is built of some of the flimsiest cardstock I've ever seen used for a screen before, as opposed to something like Access Denied or the Vampire Storytellers Handbook, the beautiful screens that were released by Biohazard Games and White Wolf Game Studio, respectively. The screen is forced to be more of a reference card than a screen.
some like it not
Even though the writing is the usual high-quality for HDI, and the art is the slim-but-pretty-good fare that they use in their pamphlet releases, the price is much to high for the content presented. The screen is of questionable use at best, and the setting information, while quite good, is not good enough to be worth the $13 HDI is asking, even with the addition of "A Healing Draught." The book is only really of much use if you intend to run a game on Pandemonium for quite a while.
Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)
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