Sunken Empires by Open Design

This product is 82 pages long. It starts with a cover, credits, and ToC. (2 pages) Next it gets into a forward by David “Zeb” Cook about the creation of the Aboleth. (2 pages)

Chapter 1 – Lost Cities of Myths and Legends. (8 pages)
It talks about varies lost cities from real life and stories about them. It gives some details on Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu. As well as talking about the fantasy lost city of Ankeshell, including a map and brief history of the city.

Chapter 2 – Pelagic Characters (15 pages)
This section talks about races and classes for a campaign set for exploring underwater. It includes a new race Maerean(half merman). Changes to core classes for a campaign focused on this. Including 45 new feats,
New Domains
Deep
Glyph
Fish
Ocean
Sea Monster

New Sorcerer Bloodlines
Aboleth
Ocean
Vril

New Wizard Schools
Glyph
Water

Chapter 3 – Aquatic Equipment and Lost Technology (12 pages)
It starts with Aquatic items 11 new weapons, 8 new armors, 25 new equipment items. Next it moves onto lost Technology 8 new weapons, 3 new armor, 5 new equipment items.

Chapter 4 – Spells and Magic Items (17 pages)
This section has 37 new spells and 42 new magic items and 6 new magic item properties.

Spells by Class
Bard – 7
Cleric – 7
Druid – 15
Sorc/Wiz – 37

Chapter 5 – Sunken Environment (6 pages)
This section is all about how to run campaigns that explore underwater. It has encounter tables, hazards, and advice on how to run campaigns.

Chapter 6 – Creatures of the Deep (17 pages)
This section has 16 new monsters including 3 new familiars, 10 variations of existing monsters, and a ecology of the Aboleth.

It closes with a OGL, 1 page ad, and back cover. (3 pages)

Closing Thoughts. This is very well written the art ranges from good to very good. The layout is nice and it is a pretty book. There is far to much to get into a lot of detail on most of the stuff. The equipment was for the most part good, interesting and fit. Same with the magic items and spells. The history and information about the three real life mythic lost cities while interesting could have easily been left out.

My only real critic is I thought chapter 5 was way to short. What is there is good but a little sparse. I think they could have easily doubled the page count to help GM's out with more information and advice. So while it was a very good book and if you are interested in running a campaign or even a few adventures under the water then it is a good pickup for the price. But it was a little light on GM help to run such a campaign so I am giving it a 4 star review. Good but with a dozen more pages could have been fantastic.