Tangents

I judge the value of a sourcebook on how many ideas it gives me as a GM. If I read a sourcebook and it inspires an interesting adventure, it's a good source book.Tangents, plainly put, is brimming with ideas. It's Planescape meets Sliders for Alternity. It gives you all the rules for Tangent travel (journey between alternate dimensions), an easy way to whip up random worlds (if you're players like plane hopping!), tons of ways to travel between tangents (ships, portals, sliding tools, even tangent jumping shrooms!) and hazards of tangent travel. I'd have to say the single best section is the hazards section. For each hazard, they list a campaign hook. For example, they detail out black holes that eat realities and then on the side they give you an idea of how to apply it to a setting.I'm already brewing up a Tangents based campaign. This book is excellent! The art, the ideas and the adventure (half the book is an adventure) are just full of ideas for Tangent hopping madness!

In general, I found this to be a useful book. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is a description of the concepts behind "plane hopping" and the second is an adventure based on the first part. I didn't read the second part in depth, because I was only interested in adding this to my existing campaign, however, it seemed to be a well formed adventure. The game concepts and rules for plane hopping seem to be well thought out, however, I did notice that there are a few areas where they may have missed some things. It really doesn't matter much, however, because there is plenty of leeway in the rule system to allow just about anything the GM needs to accomplish. It's definitely worth the price (and the read) for all of the campaign ideas that it presents. (I highly recommend reading all of the "samples" for particular rules...they help explain the point and get your mind thinking about how you could use the game mechanic.)The one thing I found humorous was their veiled reference to Amberites (c.f. Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelany) in the book. See if you can spot it...it's pretty funny.