Arcane Flavor

Chaotic Shiny Productions brought out Arcane Flavor a few months ago, but this post appears to have gotten misplaced or overlooked in the messy transfer-over from the old (now defunct) Netherwerks blog.

Having re-read the booklet, we're even more enthusiastic about recommending it to open-minded DM/GMs than before.

Arcane Flavor is  a very well-written and useful resource for fleshing out the backgrounds, cultural aspects and heritage of various arcane-type characters. While it is geared towards 4th Edition rules, this material could easily be plugged into older editions or even completely other-than-D&D-rule-sets with only a little effort.

There are a lot of great ideas inside this book. The various cultures have heft; they feel like there is something to them, without getting all buried under too much prose or too many details or anything like that. This is a dynamic resource meant to be used, not just read and forgotten--these cultures have a life of their own and each one comes packed with adventure ideas, hooks, and the kind of engaging, intriguing, inspiring details that make you want to build characters from these societies and to go explore the places revealed within each section. Like the very best such resources, Arcane Flavor presents just enough information to get your imagination revving and the dice rolling.

In the interest of full disclosure, we proof-read the manuscript and we both thoroughly enjoyed Arcane Flavor. We do not currently play 4th Edition, but like we said above: It would take very little effort to adapt Arcane Flavor to Labyrinth Lord, or some similar Old School rules-set, and frankly the cultures are worth the effort. This booklet is very well-done and a great value. We highly recommend it to anyone interested in constructing interesting cultures for their table-top gaming (regardless of edition/brand) or fiction writing efforts.

You can find out more about Arcane Flavor at Chaotic Shiny Productions: http://chaoticshinyproductions.com/arcaneflavor.php