Remarks: Ultimate Toolbox

While I’m sure Alderac Entertainment Group, publishers of Ultimate Toolbox, won’t be pleased to have their family-friendly product labeled as such, this book is gamer porn. It’s 400 pages of charts and tables, and nothing but charts and tables. If you liked all of the tables in the 1st Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and products like the Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets (which is the greatest retro-gamer porn ever), you will drool over this.

I dig this because it’s not system-specific. Although the original Toolbox was a d20 product, this can be used with 4th Edition, Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, any retro- clone. No Edition Wars or Old School issues here. Gamer porn is neutral like Switzerland.

The book is broken up into chapters, by topic. Need character backgrounds and appearance? Chapter 1. Worldbuilding and civilizations? Chapters 2 and 3. Dungeons, magic, gamemaster plot-aids? It’s all in here.

Oh, and the world builder section has maps. Maps are extra special bonus gamer porn.

This as a really nice book. Square-bound paperback, sturdy, grayscale interior on heavy, glossy paper so that it stands up to repeated use by players and gamemasters flipping through it for ideas. I will definitely shelve this within easy reach of my desk so that I can grab it and use it for inspiration while working on fantasy worldbuilding and adventures. I’ll bring it to the table during character generation sessions so the players can utilize it for developing PCs. I’ll keep it with me when running a game to help me be creative on the fly. I will use the hell out of this book. The downside? It’s spendy. $49.95 for a paperback. But it’s a very sturdy paperback, designed to be handled frequently and roughed up, and it is 400 pages. If you’re going to use it a lot as a core reference book, it’s completely worth it.

Now I want to see books like this for other genres: an Ultimate Horror Toolbox, an Ultimate Science Fiction Toolbox, and Ultimate Supers Toolbox, and so on. How about some table porn for specific settings? AEG could do an Ultimate L5R Toolbox, they own that roleplaying game. Hey, AEG, get some licenses from other publishers! Ultimate Eberron Toolbox! Ultimate Cthulhu Toybox! Ultimate World of Darkness Toolbox! Yeeeaaaaaah, baby, that’s the spot!