Sponsor

Book & Game Review
The Assassin's Handbook presents two opposing views of our gaming world. In some places, this 64 page softcover is an engaging read- interesting, clever, and downright inventive. However, in other sections the work is repetitive, awkwardly written, and poorly proofread. The writers tell a decent story at times, but Green Ronin Publishing clearly needs a good editor.

Some glaring errors make it difficult to read this book for pleasure. The section on "real world" poisons fills space, but its' stilted language reads like a 500 word book report crafted from medical encyclopedia excerpts. A master class assassin named Sonia Godreau claims pride of place in her clan, but this clan master assassin is described very shortly afterwards as recently killed and unreplaced. This same possibly dead master assassin is described later in a characters chapter as currently trying to invent a new technique. There are other assassins clearly described as undead; since Sonia is not, the authors need to make up their minds. Another master assassin character, Nasour, has a description consisting of three paragraphs copied verbatim from an earlier chapter, as if the authors had run out of ideas or time.


Finally, quite basic errors in editing ('know' instead of 'no') show yet again why every publisher needs a good human editor in addition to their (t)rusty computer spell checking program.

On the other hand, the world of assassins invented by the authors isn't all bad. This world of competing assassins is worth using as a reference text, where you can ignore internal inconsistencies. You'll have to politely but firmly suspend disbelief since one group, the poorly named Vultur, comes out of a Mafia movie by way of medieval history, and the other, the Sira't, comes out of your standard role playing adventure against lawful evil clerics. (I might have skipped mentioning the Mafia reference if the authors had not pointed it out themselves more than once. They get points for honesty, but more taken away for lack of originality.) Still, if you would like some decent ideas for an assassin player character, I'd recommend getting this handbook- but get it at a discount.

Conclusion
Possibly a good game to try out.

back