Capsule Reviews #1

In an attempt to manage the torrent of stuff that I grab off the internet on a regular basis, I am going to to cut down reviews looking at just 3 aspects - interesting crunch (things I can easily use at my table), inspiring fluff (ideas sparked or used directly) and pleasure in reading the thing in the first place.

D&D Unleashed: The Elements & Beyond. At 247 pages of planar homebrew content this is a huge amount of stuff by Benevolent Evil - split into 3 sections and a half dozen appendices. By sections we have character options, new spells and a DM section with monsters, monster customisation and magic items for 5e. Chunks are big ~ 30 pages of races, ~40 pages of subclasses, ~40 pages spells which is a lot to digest. New races has some good inspiration baked into the origins and backgrounds. Spells and monsters include variants around similar themes - I find this better for monsters as I can be inspired by 'huh - imagine all this bunch together in an environment'. As per the name, lots of tuning things for different elemental themes - earth, air, fire, water then returning to the old para-elemental ideas of earth/fire for magma, water/air for ice and so on. Design is a good standard for homebrew, art is mostly credited at the back, a few 'unknowns.'
3/5 on inspiring fluff
4/5 on useable crunch
3/5 on joy to read

Enter The Forest Pamphlet - A pamphlet from Highland Paranormal Society by Josh Hittie this setting and encounter generator is an awesome shot of 'I need a forest fast' - lots of tables for locations, encounters, things found - but also questions to pose to frame 'why is any of this happening'. No system, just inspiration.
4/5 on inspiring fluff
0/5 on useable crunch
5/5 on joy to read

Giffyglyph's Darker Dungeons - 180 pages of content to create dangerous adventures for your D&D 5e games with new rules options by Giffyglyph. I was pleasantly surprised as I leafed through this catching myself muttering 'this is some pretty clever stuff actually'. There are some very good break downs and frameworks of how to set up adventures which I think could be very useful for beginners. The ways to slot lots of these together and scale things up to make arcs are good thoughts to consider even for veterans. Layout is very clean and clear, this is a giant toolkit of modular additions for your game, offering an enormous amount of possible tweaks.
4/5 on inspiring fluff
5/5 on useable crunch
3/5 on joy to read