The Wheel of Time: Prophecies of the Dragon

Rating:
Summary: 4 Stars!
Review: All right, this book should really have a 4 star rating instead of 5. But because of the bunch of whiney people giving this a bad rating, I had to give it 5 just to bring the average up!
All the negitive reviews are so narrow minded from my point of view. I mean what are you looking for? The WOT is a vast fantasy world that no one could (with the exception of Robert Jordan obviously!) sort out in all it's forms. You have to take what you can get.
And what you get is a pretty good suplement. The book has 6 chapters and 191 pages. It starts where the core rulebook left off and continues the story. First you have to buy the core book to get started, but then is when you can get this book. That's what makes the book great too. Because you don't need it to play the WOT RPG but it does add to it. After all you may not care for where the story is heading, so as the gamemaster you can head off into a completely new direction. It gives you a storyline to follow to continue your own adventures.
Sadly this is the second and last installment in this roleplaying game series. So if your going to play as much WOT as you can you gotta get this.

Bottom line:
I recommend this book. It continues on the story in a satisfying way. But even if you don't like the story it will give you ideas to take into your own game.
Another reason you should buy it is because it adds several pages of rules, new weaves (spells) and a new background (Seanchan!) to the game. That alone makes it worth picking up.
Wheel of Time forever!!!

Rating:
Summary: Prophecies, Good or Bad
Review: At first this book looks promising for everything supposedly contained within. Fighting along side Rand al'Thor definitely has its appeal. But when looked at closer, it has a few problems. First, there are only 3 new weaves. For a new expansion book, this is very few. They do not list new Ter'angreal, Angreal and Sa'angreal in the back of the book, but the few(only one that I have seen so far) they have are listed during the adventures. This book mainly has adventures in it and aims at gaining the heros their first few levels. This is definitely not a book for players. If the characters are higher than 5th level, the adventures must be adapted because they are far too easy. With low level NPCs, only low level characters will be challenged. They also forgot many important things, especially when making NPCs. One major thing they forgot was to put number of weaves per day for the channelers. Another was the fact that they did no research on the classes. For instance, one NPC with 2 levels of armsman has the armor compatibility feat, where 3rd level armsman is required to get it. Some more armsmen have will saves above +3 with no wisdom bonus and all other modifiers only equalling +2. The list goes on but I feel that this is enough. All in all, the book looks good, but beware of its downfalls. I give it a 2.

Rating:
Summary: One of the poorest adventures I've yet seen!
Review: It's not a supplement. That'd've been useful. It's a big adventure set. That could've been useful.

Then we met the Demon-Bear.

Allow me to explain. In d20, animals don't get feats. One of the early mini-adventures has a BIG bear that has lots of bonus feats...and a party of first and second-level PCs is supposed to defeat it. When it can kill a PC with one swipe of its paw. Right.

That's emblematic of the problems with this adventure set. It's written with little attention to rules or game balance, or even party survival. Some adventures throw opponent after opponent at the PCs, but with such poor healing capability, you'll inevitably have PC casualties. While those aren't necessarily bad, having the odds stacked so heavily against you isn't fun.

Another flaw is that, in many instances, PC decisions don't matter. You are, in fact, on rails in a good many adventures, and that's BAD. The adventure in Falme, in particular, comes to mind.

It could've been good. Really. Almost anything would've been better than the ... introductory adventure included with the main book (1st-level PCs...against 3rd-level trollocs that outnumber you, and, oh yes, have high strength and high-crit-range weapons!)...save this.

If you're intending to GM Wheel of Time d20 adventures, save your money and look elsewhere. You can come up with stuff that's easily better.

Rating:
Summary: One of the poorest adventures I've yet seen!
Review: It's not a supplement. That'd've been useful. It's a big adventure set. That could've been useful.

Then we met the Demon-Bear.

Allow me to explain. In d20, animals don't get feats. One of the early mini-adventures has a BIG bear that has lots of bonus feats...and a party of first and second-level PCs is supposed to defeat it. When it can kill a PC with one swipe of its paw. Right.

That's emblematic of the problems with this adventure set. It's written with little attention to rules or game balance, or even party survival. Some adventures throw opponent after opponent at the PCs, but with such poor healing capability, you'll inevitably have PC casualties. While those aren't necessarily bad, having the odds stacked so heavily against you isn't fun.

Another flaw is that, in many instances, PC decisions don't matter. You are, in fact, on rails in a good many adventures, and that's BAD. The adventure in Falme, in particular, comes to mind.

It could've been good. Really. Almost anything would've been better than the ... introductory adventure included with the main book (1st-level PCs...against 3rd-level trollocs that outnumber you, and, oh yes, have high strength and high-crit-range weapons!)...save this.

If you're intending to GM Wheel of Time d20 adventures, save your money and look elsewhere. You can come up with stuff that's easily better.

Rating:
Summary: When authors are paid by the pound.
Review: The Wheel of Time saga is an uninspired, hardly original, badly written pile of junk. It is difficult to see a plan into its development, and the story sounds like a free association of words at the psychanalist's office. If The Lord of the Rings had not been around may be the Wheel of Time would have had a shot...but, to be honest, if the Rings had never been written, Robert Jordan would have had nothing to (badly) copy.

Rating:
Summary: Sprawling Epic
Review: This a great sprawling epic of a module, with the heroes crisscrossing the Westlands in pursuit of the Black Ajah. Many characters from the series appear, and many of the events of the series are highlighted for the players enjoyment. The Cairhein section is especially good. A very worthwhile book.

Rating:
Summary: Sprawling Epic
Review: This a great sprawling epic of a module, with the heroes crisscrossing the Westlands in pursuit of the Black Ajah. Many characters from the series appear, and many of the events of the series are highlighted for the players enjoyment. The Cairhein section is especially good. A very worthwhile book.

Rating:
Summary: Ambitious idea, mixed results
Review: What this is: an epic adventure. It would be imappropriate to review the WOT series when speaking of the Prophesies of the Dragon book; it's also not really a supplement akin to, say, The Monster Manual for D&D--the only extra skills, feats, backgrounds, etc are those directly related to NPCs in the campaign. What Prophecies is designed to do is take a party of characters through their first six levels of adventuring, which correspond roughly to the first six books of the series of novels. The players are allowed to play a key behind the scenes roll in the story of the novels and cameos have been scripted for many of the book's key characters. It's a really ambitious undertaking; players have to be given a compelling storyline, feel like they're making a difference in a campaign that covers over a year of game time, without letting them change what happens in the novels.

Does it work? I am currently GMing this adventure. On paper, it looks really good. Some of the scenes, especially in the later parts of the story, look exciting, moving even. Faile's cameo is perfect, for example. In practice, though, it's been an extremely frustrating experience. First, the early encounters (as pointed out by another reviewer) are unnecessarily difficult and add nothing to the plot. As things progress, the authors presume too much on the goals and motivations of the players. There is one chapter, for example, where the introduction says something along the lines of, "Upon entering the city, the players will want to find (a certain NPC) as soon as posible and will definitely want to investigate the actions of (another NPC)." The players in my campaign knew they wanted to talk to one of these guys eventually, but the other one was off their radar completely. Throughout, I've had to improvise ways to keep them approximating the plot line of the campaign and by chapter 3, they're feeling very manipulated.

The campaign assumes the party wants to do nothing more than hunt down dark friends and expose evil plots and will take great personal risk and go through great hardship (including, at one point, a monthlong trek through a winter wilderness without adequate provisions) on the chance of thwarting same. Characters with any other motivations (say, a character modeled after Mat or Nynaeve in the books) will feel forced into situations unnaturally. There has been more than one point where one of the players saying, "I *think* this is where the plot wants us to go."

So, in conclusion, while this adventure is excellent in its dreams and scope--and it's definitely better than something I could have designed myself--but it will fail often fail as a game. If you are intending to run a WOT campaign, buy this adventure, read it so that you thoroughly understand its scope BEFORE you even let your players make up characters. The characters need to be in the philosophy of the story or the story won't work.