I was a huge video / board game nerd growing up, but it wasn’t until this year that I played my very first D&D campaign. Let me tell you, it was OVERWHELMING! Hit dice? Dex saves? Cover? That said, my group and I just finished “Lost Mine of Phandelver” with no casualties and I’m hooked. I can see why some people walk into physical stores just to buy miniatures and 3D terrain. Roll20 made things easy for our group, but there are no doubt plenty of other options out there that work too.
Today, I’m here to showcase and review a couple of products from Session Zero Games…specifically, the Tome of Magical Mystery and Cursed Collective which are compatible with D&D 5e. From time to time I will be referring to other products listed on their official website. The products I will be touching on are finished products, though it’s worth noting that the developer plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign to create remastered and deluxe editions of said products. I’ll add a Kickstarter link at the end of this review once that particular project is live. Before I go any further I’m required by FTC regulations to disclose that I was paid to cover these products, but as always any and all opinions are my own. The only thing paid for here was my time.
Let’s start with the Tome of Magical Mystery, which boasts a PDF total page count of 156. There’s a ton of cool looking content here. The Tome of Magical Mystery is essentially a collection of items including (but not limited to) armor, melee weapons, shields, relics of power, consumables, and wearables. The sections of the book are broken up into Tier One through Tier Four, tiers being appropriate for certain character level ranges. The beginning of each tier section includes a sub-table of contents of sorts (called visual guides), showing pictures of each of the items, their effects, and on what page number you can find it in the book. Past those visual guide pages are the items themselves, each containing a paragraph of flavor text, what the items do, and any special abilities they may have. There are a few monsters listed toward the back of the manual.
Regarding the Tome of Magical Mystery I’ll say this: It’s a DM’s dream. I’ve thought about DM-ing myself once I’ve figured out how, and having a large library of items to gift to the party would be incredibly helpful. The Garments of the Monkey, for example, gives +4 Hide Armor but also give the wearer advantage on Dexterity checks/saving throws + some other cool things. I can’t tell you how that would have helped me in that last campaign in which I participated. The developer / creator clearly gave these items a lot of thought and the art is equally as beautiful. I can only imagine how long it took to come up with all of the items featured within this book.
The Cursed Collective, while similar to that of the Tome of Magical Mystery in that it isn’t an actual campaign or one-shot, takes a different approach. This book features roughly 62 pages of curses…you know, in case you felt like your party wasn’t suffering enough *evil laugh*. Don’t worry, these items typically have a benefit too. The book contains an Arcana rule check table to be referenced as items are discovered and investigated. On a natural 1, completely wrong information is given to the players and so on. Spells like Remove Curse or Dispel Magic still work and the book details how to handle such things.
The items themselves are varied and creative. I particularly liked the Rings of Fellowship and no, you don’t transform into a hobbit and demand second breakfast after putting one of these rings on. Rather, the wearers of the rings gain protection +1, but take 4D6 damage if they physically drift more than 5 feet apart. Awesome right? If I do DM in the future, I think I would be hard-pressed to not include at least half of the items from this book into the campaign. My party wouldn’t know what reality was anymore after I got through with them! Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying that out loud…
Also available of note are physical card decks, tiers 1-4, that contain pictures of various items and are meant to be passed out to players who earn said item. The card itself would replace the need to track the newly acquired item on a character sheet. I didn’t receive a copy of these, but it’s worth having a look at those too should you play D&D in person.
Both of the these books (Tome of Magical Mystery & Cursed Collection) are incredibly well done and I’d consider them a boon to any new or experienced DM’s out there. The flavor text included with the items are a nice touch as it’ll allow the DM to get players immersed with the item and possibly even expand upon its backstory. The books are well organized too…I didn’t find it hard to find what I was looking for. My only concern was the price…but I’ve come to learn that D&D is an expensive hobby. Those who accepted D&D as their second child have probably already come to terms with emptying their wallet regularly for it.
Tome of Magical Mystery & Cursed Collection are available in PDF form should you play D&D digitally. The developer has allowed me to show off content from the PDF so gander at the below video to see some of these fantastic ideas. Again, I will provide a link to the Kickstarter, which is aiming to fund the premium / remastered editions, once the campaign goes live. Typically I’d provide a review score out of 10, but with this encompassing multiple products and the fact that I’m not well versed in D&D compared to others, I’ll simply say that I wholeheartedly recommend these products to any D&D player out there who are interested in ways to spice up their game. The imagination and creativeness that went into these books are nothing short of incredible.
Store Page: https://www.sessionzerogames.com/shop
Kickstarter: Link Forthcoming
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Final Verdict: A Natural 20
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