Great value. Lots of fantasic pieces to decorate your gaming products!

Dean's work is spectacular and often finds itself in my adventures.

First off, when Dylan told me he was writing an entire book about spiders, I was a little nervous. I thought it might get monotonous. Creating an adventure out of just spiders, I wasn't sure how that was going to work out. Wow, I was pleasantly surprised. And doff my Steelers hat in his general direction.

Before I go further, I want to say something about the man behind the spiders. Dylan has been producing some very cool and interesting adventures for the OSR for, I think, two or more years now. I've got a copy of each and every one. I think he is one of the hidden talents within an expanding interest in old school gaming. I say hidden because I don't think he gets the notoriety he deserves. His work is always clean and crisp, interesting and fun and Dylan has a distinct style so his adventures and products are different from anyone else's you'll find out there.

To the review, The Big Book of Spiders is much different from Dylan's other offerings. Besides being focused on spiders, there is a very cool narrative that runs through the book. And as your reading it, you realize you are the one in the narrative speaking about the book your holding in your hand. Dylan executes this like a professional hit man, cool and calm.

The first section of the book is a mini monster manual that focuses on all the devious species of spiders. Again, you might think there would be some redundancy, but I am here to report that every entry is distinct. There are 24 spiders for you to use in your adventures. And the fact is, I used one of the spiders for an adventure I wrote for The Manor #6. I read the entry and knew just where to put the creepy little guy.

The second section is spells & equipment. A close look at marketable resources that a spider produces such as silks and poisons. Regular items and magic items with a spider theme. I think I may have to add some of the items into one of my stores. A fence for a thieves guild and the fence has a thing for spiders. That would be cool. And if you need only one reason to get TBBoS it's this, SPIDER GOLEM! Tell me that doesn't give you an OSR chubby.

It's an interesting concept and I'd have to see it in play. A spinner could be the ultimate thief sub-class.

Part four is a short adventure where your goal is to DESTROY a spider cult. Again, the book you hold in your hand plays a big part in the adventure. Dylan sets up the situation, describes the rooms, but its up the GM to run it. No training wheels here. The maps are well done. Just a suggestion though, go the bathroom before you run the adventure or you might get a little paranoid sitting upon the porcelain throne.

And the final section is a few riddles that Dylan is so fond of. I'm even part of an answer to a riddle I got wrong. I suck at the riddles.

You get a lot of bang for your bucks in this offering. I am really surprised how much he squeezed in. If you want a print offering, you'll need to hop...or what ever spiders do...now I have to look it up...hydraulic pressure?...that doesn't sound right...hydraulic over to Dylan's blog, Digital Orc and you'll find the Paypal button ($4.99) beneath his video presentation. Or if you use a tablet, e-reader, or I'm to good for actual books kinda guy that will only read PDFs ($3.99) then head over to RPGNow and grab The Big Book of Spiders.

Matt jackson, the guy who makes all those cool Moleskin Map series on RPGNow and his maps can be found in many OSR products including my own Manor zine a few times, has released what I hope will be a new line of products called, Side Treks. His first venture out is called Side Treks: The Crossroads of Spyley.

These kind of products have always been some of my favorites and ones I like to create myself. The Crossroads of Spyley is a small location along a forest that can easily be plopped into your fantasy campaign. If you need an interesting location for your players to stay at along the way or maybe their exploring the forest and need a base of operation this product does that and more.

First off, you get one of Matt's fantastic maps. He's getting better with each product he produces. The map is clean and crisp. He has three buildings at the crossroads detailed within the overall map, The Drunken Dragoon (tavern), Marreno's Store, and a big ass barn. This strangely rainy location is subtle and effective. You're not going to find any huge drama going on, but some people going about there everyday life with interesting back stories. It's a great canvas for a GM to create their own drama that could occur.

And I love the reason why it is raining. Nice touch.

I really like The Crossroads of Spyley. I will find a place in my current world to place it. It's too good not to. If your a fan of small interesting locations that you can use at a moments notice and love good maps then Side Treks: Crossroads of Spyley is for you. It will cost you $1.99 to get a copy and is well worth it.

Richard supplements his fantastic product D30 Sandbox Companion, with this great addition. It is a collection of crisp, clean hex maps. You can draw a large map of your campaign world and then begin to break it down one hex at a time. For the single hex maps he provides a worksheet to put in key areas and monsters. At one glance a GM can know what's going on in that hex without reading through pages of notes. Someone who often runs games with minimal prep the Hex Map Pack is a fantastic help.

I'm a big fan of New Big Dragon products and this one is my favorite. I'm creating a campaign and the D30 Sandbox companion is now on top of a small pile of books I'm using to aid me in building a world. It's concise, so you won't get lost in hundreds of pages trying to find a chart you want to use. It's useful, there is something in here to develop various parts of your campaign. I highly recommend the D30 Sandbox Companion, especially if you are into building your own worlds.

+Tom Doolan of the Wishful Gaming blog has written Life of Rage, an Orcish adventure game. Tom also writes short fiction that is available on Smashswords. If you're looking for a good fantasy fiction story give them a look. I've read two of his stories and enjoyed them both.

But what I want to talk to you about is Life of Rage. Besides being a kick ass title it is a very good gaming book. Tom wants you to play an orc and stop being a damn sissy about killing things. And I quote, "...every adventure should be able to be solved with the judicious use of violence." That folks, is poetry. Tom has developed a mini-handbook so you can play orcs in your campaign.

I think what I like best about Life of Rage is Tom keeps it simple. You'll be able to read it through in a single pass and roll it out for your players. He offers you three classes and a sub-class. Keeping with the basics, the three classes offered are race classes; orc, half-orc and goblin. Yup, goblins are considered weenie versions of orcs. The sub-class is the shaman. Here's where he does something I like a lot, shamans can chose from four dominions and that determines what spells they gain. Guess what? Not one fricking healing spell in any of the lists. Oh yeah! Oh they can heal. It's an innate power. But they must draw the life from another thing to do the healing. There also a great write up about herbal healing, but you still get your ass kicked even when you're healing.

Orc do no accumulate experience points. That's what the stupider weaklings collect. Orcs horde glory. He even introduces a new currency into the orcish culture, targs. I really like both ideas. They both may be cosmetic, but it adds a depth to the orcish way of life.

He provides a player's guide to orcs, sort of the ecology of an orc. My favorite section was about orc gods. Bravo for Tom for not falling back on good old Gruumsh. I like old one-eye, but Tom creates his own pantheon of brutishness. These are very well thought out and interesting.

Lastly Tom gives you a sample of the orcish lay of the land. It could easily be lifted in placed into a campaign. He includes some nice details about some different tribes. Each has their own personality and distinction. Lastly, he includes a section about how you could run a orcish campaign.

I think Tom has done an excellent job with Life of Rage. I've been creating a campaign world lately and I plan on using many options offered in Life of Rage. It adds a depth to a race most consider cannon fodder. He also offers a choice to make orcs more than just a 1HD critter to be killed without a thought. There is a lot of great stuff in here that I plan on including my world.

It is a 29-page PDF for $2.99. Well worth the price.

I've been a fan of The Forge Studios products for a long time, but mainly for the art. This time around, I'm using Dellake Village as one of the starting points for a campaign. The art for the buildings is great and enhances the setting. I'll be getting a lot of use out of this product. It has helped in getting ideas started for my next game.

Joseph Bloch poses the question, "What if Gary Gygax had not left TSR in 1985, and had been allowed to continue developing the world's most famous fantasy role-playing game?" Adventures Dark and Deep is a possible answer to that question. I'm a gamer from the late 70's. I remember that feeling when I first opened a copy of AD&D DM's Guide. Everytime I opened that book I found something new. Something fascinating. In the proceeding years nothing has been able to replicate that feeling. Until I opened the Adventures Dark and Deep Game Masters Toolkit. There is a lot of packed into its pages. I find myself flipping through it and catching things I missed the first time around. The rules provided are hauntingly familiar, but with light touches that make them new. This book too me back to when I was a teen-age gamer sitting in my friend's room comparing the new discovers, sharing the knowledge we were gleaming from these precious tomes. Joseph has done an incredible job of capturing that magic and putting a fresh spin on it.

Lair of the Orc Shaman is written by Felbrigg Herriot and the maps are provided by the infamous Matt Jackson. This is a micro adventure in PocketMod format. That means its small. Wee even. One page that can be made into a tiny booklet. It will cost you .99 cents to take a peek. Let me tell you about it a little since this is a review.

First off, love the cover. It's what originally made me click on it on RPGNow. Simple and effective. In the preview, it says it's a 1st edition adventure for 5 to 7 first level characters. It has 17 rooms in an underground crawl. The room descriptions are tight. Considering the space limitations I was amazed Felbrigg squeezed in all the rooms. Plus, there are some nice descriptions. It is not a list of rooms with just monsters and loot. He manages to tell you what will happen if this happens and the contents of the room.

While I was reading this adventure I kept thinking this would me a great funnel module for the DCC crowd. Tweak the stats and you'd be good to go. No matter what system you have its a good straight forward adventure that will easily fill a night of gaming and that you can plug into your game at any time.

Volume Four of Moleskin Maps by Chubby Monster Games from the hand of Matt Jackson. If you read this blog, on Google+, read nearly any gaming blog Matt's maps are there. His map style looks so simple and eloquent. Like the rest in the series there are 10 maps included with 10 adventure sheets to go with them. These focus on underground maps, one with ruins. All the maps are useful. A quick flip through the book and its easy to come up with ideas on the fly to fill these caverns.

A few weeks back I needed something to get my brain going and I was drawing for crap, so I got one of Matt's maps out, numbered the encounters and soon I was going full tilt on a mini adventure. I don't know about most of you, but for me, the map comes first. It helps me develop the adventure. Sometimes I know what I want ahead of time, but its good practice to use other's maps to exercise your adventure writing skills.

The 4th volume of Moleskin Maps is fertile ground for ideas. And I've praised the utility of the adventure sheets in the past. I like the no nonsense layout. You get your maps and a tool to use with your map. Done and done.

Matt Jackson releases his third volume of Moleskin Maps. If you are in the need for maps, and if your gamer you can never have enough maps, plop down the $2.99 of fake money (cause when you buy stuff over the internet it doesn't really count) and receive 10 maps and each map has a write up sheet to make quick work of an adventure.

These maps are ideal if you're a GM and need something quick for your game night. I've used Matt's maps several times and what's great about them is they are small and manageable at a glance. And don't confuse their small size with blandness. Each map has its own unique personality. When I look at Matt's maps I intuitively think that's where the roper goes, loot there, good place for a trap and maybe a room for some grunts for the players to kill. Bam! Within 10 seconds of looking at his maps I have an adventure. It's like magic.

If you starting or in the middle of a campaign do yourself a favor and pick up Moleskin Maps: Volume Three or two or one or all of them. It will make your adventure planning easier so you have more time to plan out your next TPK. For the low price of $2.99 you're getting hell of a good value for your money.

Menagerie of the Ice Lord (MotIL) is the fourth offering from Dylan Hartwell over at his Digital Orc blog. I've linked to the post where he does a video of what's included in MotIL. A lot. Sure you can buy the PDF, but once you see what you get with the print version I'm thinking you'll upgrade to it.

First off, I think this is the best one yet by Dylan. It's got a minimalist old school approach. In the first 19 pages he gives you info about the townsfolk of Nix and the precious crystals this adventure is built around. Also within those first 10 pages is a 100 room castle with maps. The descriptions are sparse and to the point. The maps are simple, easy to read and they look great.

The adventure itself makes sense. It has a purpose. And I always favor adventures where something has happened and the adventurers are investigating as much as exploring and whacking monsters.

Monsters! This adventure has its own Monster Manual in the back. Like S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. Thirty new monsters for your players to get their weapons dirty upon. All the monster appear somewhere in the adventure. Dylan provides a character sheet so if you want to tally all the monsters you've killed in the adventure you can tick it off. My barbarian/skull collecting side of me appreciates this.

Dylan does the writing, layout and did all the mapping and artwork. So like all his other projects it very much his own. And I think that's what I like best about his work.

I plan on using this adventure somewhere, sometime. There are adventures I read and I put aside for when I develop a gaming world or have a space in the world I am running I make sure a carve out a little space for it. The Menagerie of the Ice Lord will find a place in my gaming world. I can't give a product higher praise than that.

Price wise its only $2.99 for the PDF, but I am going to suggest that you go for the print version at $3.99. You get a lot of fun stuff in your envelope. And there is no extra cost for shipping to Europe and other parts of the known world.

Great work Dylan and keep those adventures coming.

Matt Jackson puts out some of the best maps. They are simple and easily usable for nearly any adventure. And I also love the format where there is a small subset of the map in the corner and the GM can develop the adventure. It's very easy and quick to use. As soon as I downloaded it within a half hour I already had two very cool adventures written. If your looking for a great maps and a quick way to develop an adventure give Matt's Moleskin Maps a try. I be getting Moleskin Map Volume Three.

The purpose of the product is provide GMs with a small village to plant in their campaign. It starts with an overview map of Cowfold. In typical Matt Jackson style it is simply drawn with an old school feel that I personally will never tire of. From there it is broken into three sections. A short journal entry from a traveler named Lexx who enters the village as a stranger and encounters some of what Cowfold has to offer.

The section section is the meat of the product and these are descriptions of Locations in Cowfold. Each of these descriptions is accompanied by a small inset of its location on the village map. Descriptions of the people within the village and how they interact with the others. Then the best part is the Secrets section. Gives a peek at what's going on behind those innocent faces.

And lastly there is a small section dedicated to three adventure hooks for a GM to tempt the players passing through. There are many more hooks available in the secrets sections of the descriptions that a GM could plunder for adventure hooks.

This is a well done product. It looks good, easy to read and easy to use. There is no reason not to get it since it's free. It's not like we all can't use a premade village in our games. Overall, this is a great start for Chubby Monster Games. I think they have good talent in their small group and look forward to the other products they develop.