Oathbound:Plains of Penance by Bastion Press for the d20 system was a great read, I loved the new player classes and monsters and really enjoyed the setting. The new species of Aurad and Tthords truly fascinated me, and one can even play an underwater adventure with a dolphin as a player character for the first time. It is a colorful and rich setting with intricate details paid to the cities histories on the Plains. Having not read the first corebook, I cannot accurately comapre it to its predecessor but it was also well-written. Mana engines are an awesome idea and it is about time a magic steampunk element entered a high fantasy setting. If one has already, I've missed it and would love to have it pointed out to me.

The skill classes of disjoiner and artificier, allow creation ex nihilo and destruction on fundamental levels and add fun for a campaign book that is heavuly druidic in it's foci. It is often hard to run a druid-based game but the system of watchtowers and territories as spelled out in this book make it fascinating and possible to run an entirely druidic game for once and get the players really involved as artificiers create new life and can unbalance the systems of nature. It also provides valuable tips on how to motivate DRuid PCs. It offers ten full pages of ecology alone as well as several well-planned ready to run adventures with random elements for the gaming group.

It has made me want to read Oathbound: Penance now to learn abourt th ePlains major city and as such, must be considered a sucessful RPG book as I want to learn more about the setting and potentially run a game in it.