Steve Kenson

This is quite possibly my favorite roleplaying supplement ever. It can be used in either a fantasy setting or with d20 Modern. The rules elegantly adapt a portion of the d20 System--skills and feats--to create a flexible and balanced set of psychic abilities that are unique and flavorful.

I must admit I'm prejudiced: I hate psionics. Always have. In AD&D, it was a separate system that made psionicists interact poorly with non-psionic characters, and was also overpowered. In 3rd ed, psionics show more has much the same power issue, but they tried to shoehorn it into being just another type of spellcaster. If "psionic" is supposed to mean having powers of the mind, then why so many blasting and transmutation effects?

Reports of psychics in the real world have always seemed to suggest a skilled internal manipulation of subtle energies rather than a welling-up or channeling of arcane power. I was actually writing up preliminary notes for a skill-based psychic when I heard that the Psychic's Handbook was coming out. This book lived up to all of my wishes, and more. There are several different options presented for giving a character psychic abilities. The basic option is the Psychic base class (plus an equivalent advanced class for d20 Modern). This gives you bonus Psychic feats as you level, so that you start out with a few skills gathered under one Talent (one type of feat, and the closest equivalent to schools of magic) and broaden your Talents or become more focused later.

To create a narrowly gifted psychic whose mundane (or magical) talents lie elsewhere, a combination of two feats gives a character of any class access to all the skills related under one Talent. For just a splash of psychic ability, you can take just one feat--Wild Talent--to gain access to one Psychic skill.

All told, you've got balance, intuitiveness, "realism", and options, options, options. show less

This book is a very detailed look at some of the peoples and legends and gods of the Sword Coast, which seems (at least to this very casual D&D enjoyer) like *the* popular campaign setting in the Forgotten Realms. I found this book harder going than the more "flip through" books of Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and in fact I skimmed a little bit of Chapter 2 to make it go faster.

I did like reading about the Moonshaes and the Underdark (the latter because show more I am there right now in my playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3) and there were a couple of neat character backgrounds that I made note of for future reference. So it was still worth borrowing from the library. show less

I was somewhat skeptical at first, but this won me over after a bit. The half (over half, really) of the book focuses on a brief overlook at the state of the northern portion of Faerun in the 5e timeline. While I do wish there was more here, it's still a breezy and interesting read. It bounces between several sections with different narrators—and it works! The second half is devoted to additional class options for the game: racial options, class archetypes, backgrounds, a handful of new show more spells, and so on. I was fairly neutral on this section at first glance, but after reading it in full, there's lots of good stuff here. The new class options are, for the most part, really fun. Even the ones that at first blush seem underpowered are still flavorful and a nice alternative to the usual glut of character specifics people pick (personal favorites are the two rogue options, swashbuckler and mastermind, and the bladesinger wizard focus).

I feel like I'm one of the few who actually like that Wizards isn't vomiting out sourcebook after sourcebook, but I do hope we see more of this sort of thing down the road. show less

Other reviews on Goodreads are not the most complimentary, so I was skeptical going into this. As with many other books (and other things in life), your expectations going in can shape your opinion in the end. My previous experience with the world of Shadowrun was limited to being an avid player of FASA Studio's 2007 Xbox360/PC online first-person shooter. I found the video game version of Shadowrun to be intriguing - while it was light on story, I really liked the idea of a tale taking show more place in a near-future world in which battles are waged using high-tech weaponry alongside "magic" of the kind more often seen in fantasy. Oh, and the inclusion of what Shadowrun calls "metahumans", e.g. Trolls, Orcs, Dwarves and Elves sounded like fun as well. I found out that this videogame was based off of a tabletop RPG game, and that there were also several novels penned in this universe.

That being said, as I already knew a little bit about the world of Shadowrun, and I was interested in experiencing it in literary form, the critical side of my personality went easy on this. Yeah, the title "Born to Run" is cheesy, IMO. The cover art is horrendous (good thing I don't judge books by their covers). There isn't much that could be said to be "deep" about the story either. That's ok though. Sometimes I want to eat a well-prepared meal of medium rare-prime rib, and other times I want a cheap, greasy hamburger. This is the cheap, greasy hamburger of my literary interests. The cheap, greasy hamburger is horrible food, but sometimes you just want a cheap greasy hamburger, and it hits the spot just right.

The story takes place in 2053, following a 20-ish girl named Kellan Colt as she arrives in Seattle, having travelled from her hometown of Kansas City. In a nutshell, she is a novice "Shadowrunner" - pretty much a mercenary for hire. Most of the book deals with her meeting others in the trade in the Seattle area and learning about some of her own magical ability, completing her first two "runs" in the process. The story is very much plot/action-driven, and there's not much depth to any of the characters in the 288 pages, but I did enjoy this, and I might even pick up the next book in the series - especially since it is written by the same author and follows the same protagonist. show less