Virtual Scribe Reviews

http://www.dmsguild.com/product/1976...-Rarity-Tables

First Impressions: 4 Stars, 40/50 Points
I really like what Rob has done with these tables. He has sliced and diced the magic item tables from the DMG (and the SRD) all sorts of ways to make it easy for a DM to find or randomly generate magic items. There are a few minor flaws here and there, but nothing that hinders the useful of this module. The key to using this module is to read the Instructions provided in the Story list. Once you do that, all of the various tables and templates will make sense.

Quality: 12/15 Points
In products like this there is no feasible way to test every link and the results of every table, but after the numerous tests I made, every link worked and every table or template generated reasonable results. I did find that some of the templates don’t generate perfectly formed grammar and occasionally the layout is inconsistent (i.e. when a magic shop is sold out of multiple items), but nothing that deters usability of the results. I also did find a few spelling errors (i.e. “Magic Botique”), but again, nothing critical. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming is that the various table groups are simply named (rings, rods, scrolls, etc) and therefore they won’t sort together and may easily get confused with tables from other modules.

For example;
Attachment 17237

Completeness: 8/10 Points
This module has a glut of tables that group magic items up into all types of useful sets. I haven’t been able to think of any other way that I could benefit from the items being presented. The one aspect (as discussed below) is that the Magic Shop creation templates are not as complete as they could be.

Creativity: 7/10 Points
Magic shop creation templates are the height of creativity in this module. And, they are pretty cool, but just seem to be the beginning of what they could become. They could include things like; descriptions of the location and owner, or a remarkable feature of the shop such as an animated statue, pet, or trinket.

Value: 6/10 Points
So, is this module worth a $1.95USD? If you want to have a better way to access (through lists or random table generation) the magic items in the DMG or SRD, then yes. If you are looking for a cool creative magic shop generator, then probably not yet.

Versatility: 2/5 Points
The tables that are used to generate the Magic Shops and such for the templates are really pretty limited and are just a start as to what they could be. For instance, there are only 5 first and last names for the shop owners. A cool idea, but given the online name generators available, a list of 20 or 30 each would be simple to do. I’m also a bit disappointed that in the larger towns, only a single shop is created to host all of the items available for the entire community. I would think that once you got to a large town or a small city that there would start to be a chance for more than one shop per community.