Game: Pocket Grimoire: Divine
Publisher: Green Ronin
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 21st, July 2002
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10 [ Really good ]
Total Score: 13
Average Score: 6.50
The Pocket Grimoire: Divine is the sister of Pocket Grimoire: Arcane and it’ll come as no surprise that the books are very much the same. There’s little chance that a busy GM being pestered by three players at once, fighting for his slice of pizza, stealing the last can of Mountain Dew while quickly checking the rules of an obscure spell will confuse the two books though since Divine is in blue, Arcane in browny-red and the internal page borders of the books are two very different patterns.
The Pocket Grimoire: Divine covers more character classes than the Arcane book did. Adept, Blackguard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin and Ranger spells are all included and the spells for each class are listed, by level, right at the start of the book. The Divine book, as you would expect, also lists its spells by domain as well and there are more domains than just those in the core rules. There’s Air, Animal, Chaos, Construct, Death, Destruction, Distraction, Domination, Dream, Earth, Entrancement, Evil, Fey, Fire, Gateways, Good, Healing, Judgement, Knowledge, Law, Luck, Magical, Missionary, Plant, Protection, Rainbow, Secrets, Shadow, Strength, Sun, Thievery, Time, Travel, Trickery, Vengeance, War and Water. Phew. In order words – there are loads of domains. One concern creeps slyly to mind though. What if two different companies create domains with the same name but those domains aren’t really equivalent? For example, two (or more) d20 companies could create the “Fey Domain” for their products and start to populate it with new spells but the fairies of company one are bright and sparkly creatures who light up forests at night but the fairies of company two are rather sinister, secret creatures who are rarely seen and are rumoured to be responsible for all sorts of nasty curses. It is even worse if the fairies from company one are planar creatures but fragments of dream given form in company two. It wouldn’t seem likely that you could easily put both sort of spells from both sort of fairies into one general “Fey Domain”. It seems like a bit of a headache for the editor of the Pocket Grimoire. The chances are that the book would have to pick only one of the available domains when there are multiple choices available. Oh well, let’s not make a mountain out of a mole hill, it was just a mild concern.
In addition to the spells from the core rules a total of 13 different books provided entries for the divine grimoire. The list of contributors is nearly identical to those for the arcane grimoire.
Akrasia (Eden Studios, Inc.)
Beyond the Veil (Trident Inc / Atlas Games)
Blood Reign of Nishanpur (Paradigm Concepts)
The Book of Eldritch Might (Monte Cook)
Codex Arcanis (Paradigm Concepts)
The Divine and the Defeated (White Wolf Publishing [Sword and Sorcery Studios])
Dungeons (Alderac Entertainment)
Evil (Alderac Entertainment)
Freeport: The City of Adventure (Green Ronin)
Interludes: Brief Expeditions to Bluffside (Thunderhead Games [now part of Mystic Eye Games])
Relics & Rituals (copyright to Clark Peterson [published as a Scarred Lands, Sword and Sorcery Studios book])
The Tide of Years (copyright to Michelle Nephew [published as an Atlas Games book])
Traps and Treachery (Fantasy Flight, Inc)
That means one less Green Ronin book, the publishers of the Pocket Grimoires, is in the list but there’s a new publisher in the form of Eden Studios. I’m left to wonder whether any future printings of the Pocket Grimoire series, any possible updates, will leave d20 publishers forming a queue in order to get their name and their spells (and the prestige that might bring) into the book.
As with the Arcane book there are no illustrations; even the front cover is bare, but there are the occasional grey box of rules and tables.
There has to be slightly less divine spells than arcane spells in the two grimoires. The divine grimoire has a larger list of spells at the start of book since it lists every spell by class and then by domain. In fact, the listing of spells is more than 10 pages longer and since both books have 256 pages this must mean there are 10 less pages of spells. Still; it’s not something you notice, there are still hundreds of spells from a dozen books.
I think the grimoires are a good idea. The two together are about the same size as a single core rule book but the smaller size means they’re a little easier to use, especially when you’re tucked behind a GM screen or sharing table space with four other players.
I’m sure there will be GMs and players out there who don’t particularly think much of the idea of paying twice for the same spells – which is what you’re doing if you already have every contributing book. I suspect there will be more GMs and players out there who’ll genuinely appreciate the chance to add some form of control to their collection of d20 books.
