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I special ordered Fantasy Craft through my FLGS. In light of my current economic downturn, I have been holding off on purchasing a lot of RPG books I don't intend to actually use in a game for a while. However, I decided to make the plunge for Fantasy Craft. For one thing, it is an underexposed game that would probably appeal to a lot of people who have never heard of it, so I feel like I should support the publisher now, when they can appreciate it, rather than later, when the book has descended into the doldrums of slow-moving RPG stock. I anticipate it will be a good read. Also, it has a generous OGC declaration, something I feel should be vigorously supported as the RPG industry transitions into a number of different business channels.

So why Fantasy Craft? Probably my strongest motivation is to see how well it would do for a baroque fantasy game, in the vein of Talislanta, the Dying Earth, or high fantastic Britain. The emphasis on skills and non-combat capabilities is a draw, too. Although I really like Pathfinder, some of my campaign ideas have been relegated to being possible GURPS or Hero projects due to their lack of hacking-and-looting.

From a creator standpoint, Fantasy Craft seems to represent a distinct and possibly interesting variation of the 3e engine that retains a high level of interface compatability with other 3e games, while running on a very different kind of fuel. If, indeed, it looks like a good system for running domains, playing out intrigue, and slaying giant monsters, in addition to the usual hack-and-slash and looting, I may adopt it for my first published fantasy setting, a non-traditional, baroque fantasy world with a strong amount of emphasis on culture, social station, and weird magic. As an additional benefit, I think it will be an important publishing resource going forward, as the creators seemed to have come up with some good innovcations that could be used in whole or in part in other projects.

I am a little skeptical of Fantasy Craft as the basis for a realistical game, given some of its fairly artificial constraints, but that will be something I can only discover by reading and testing.

NPC gear is a problem for me. It was ingrained into my mind as a young gamer that magical items were magical, hence, rare. AD&D agreed with me; once upon a time it was notable that most death knights carried a magical sword. This works fine in most cases. By awarding the occasional, valuable piece of equipment, each PC gets a turn to get something cool. The problem arises in high level games.

Suppose you wanted to create a troll champion, a steel-clad monster with an enormous maul. He is the sort of character that wades through a platoon of dwarves, flattening them left and right. If you follow the guidelines in 3e, 3.5, or Pathfinder, you will discover that at CR 15, he should have a magical weapon. However, you didn't really conceive of him as having a magical weapon, or even much magical gear. While in theory, as a mighty warrior, he should be entitled to a share of loot that would give him a few magic items, his main threat should be his sheer might. So a dilemma arises. Do I provide less gear, preserving the image of a brutal war-hulk, clad in simple but durable armor and carrying a steel sledge, knowing that his attack and defense numbers will sit a bit low, or do I give in and give him a magical weapon, armor, and maybe a ring? If he has less valuable gear, do I make up the difference in treasure? Or does the lower treasure make up for the slightly easier difficulty? In a magical world, does it make sense for such a beast's master to not provide it at least a magical trinket or two?

Why do electronic downloads need to be cheap? To sell someone a book, you need merely convince someone it is worth the money for the convenience of being able able to read it at any time. To sell someone a PDF, you must convince someone that your book is good enough that its creator deserves to be rewarded for their labors. While there is certainly an ethical argument to be made there, this point is mainly important because of casual infringement. You will never dissuade premeditated crime, and you can ask any reasonable thing of your loyalists. But to sell to a disinterested stranger, you must show them, "This book has value and should be preserved in this world." The legalistic argument is but one, and has limited persuasive power to some. That is why the price point of the digital product is lower than for a physical product.

A PDF must compete against a number of other options: illegal piracy, a different PDF that costs less, other free things on the Internet worth reading, their own labors and activities, etc. The price point of a physical book remains higher than than that of a PDF as long as a book remains of superior value to the typical customer.

I started playing D&D in 1983 after being previously exposed to an AD&D Monster Manual at a church camp. I saw the Elmore and Easley illustrations and was instantly hooked. Despite some inconsistent formative epxeriences with DMs, I went on to become a lifelong gamer. Apart from a brief period of time around 1997 in which I started to wonder if tabletop games had a point and spent much of my time drinking margaritas and attending dance clubs instead, I have been pretty steady at it.

Thinking about games in the mid 1980s is a trip on a time machine. The world has changed. I have changed. The kind of person I was then could not exist now. The 1980s were a time when you could stick Dervishes into a fantasy game and make vague references to grim desert gods without people thinking too much about the possible offense to Muslims (and history teachers... dervishes???). The Cold War was still going on. A computer program was a fragile, exotic creature that lived on a "floppy disk" and had to be zealously protected. Characters in fantasy art looked like characters in fantasy movies, who curiously resembled rock bands. The US could still reliably depend on other countries to exploit for a product as cheap as you could possibly imagine. It was the general wisdom that female gamers were both rare and aberrant; even people who approved of the notion might be uncertain where you would find them, apart from colleges.

There is no question that classic games suffered from low production values. They were poorly written, poorly edited, and poorly produced, and that remained the case until about 1982. In 1982, however, RPGs invaded Toys R Us. I used to beg my parents to take me a to mythical gaming store in town, since Toys R Us would not carry lead-based miniature figures. I blithely ignored the fact that virtually all gaming products were recommend for people much older than me.

The modern world is very different. Self-publishing skills, the computer, political and historical awareness, and so on are all considered basic skills for a game designer, which has become an actual (part-time) vocation. I think in the modern era, a "dervish," that is, desert nomad of the Bedouin type, would not see the light of day, due to the religious insensitivity and cultural ignorance rolled up into that one concept. It might occur to people to research devishes, and it might occur to a writer that their readers might Google or Wikipedia them. Clumsy text manipulation is no excuse in an era where Microsoft Word can lay out passable two-column pages. Artwork can be easily obtained from semi-professional artists posting their work on the Internet, for hire, cheap.

In many ways, the gaudy old boxed set, with its "fantasy" cover fonts and its product the loving labor of a few overworked hobbyists, is the Vaudeville of modern gaming. People will no longer pay for skilled but creaky and ultimately provincial acts when they can see modern theater, music shows broadcast on cable, TV, and DVDs (now, Blu-Ray). The most successful Vaudeville acts were able to translate their skills into mass entertainment. Now mass entertainers must translate their skills into a world of customized media content.

I can see a place for a $60 boxed set in today's world: in the hands of the discerning connoiseur. The new D&D basic sets, with their glossy rulebooks and their prepackaged, prepainted minis, are not destined to be successful. The successful gateway drug, like a successful collectible card trading game, should begin with a thoughtless $15 purchase and should be accessible to a young teenager and a friend. The feathered hair of a rock star is no longer the standard in fantasy art, replaced by the bulky shoulder plates of the MMORPG avatar. Nonetheless, fantasy games should be unafraid to be what they are.

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The Iconic Bestiary: Classics of Fantasy, is a monster sourcebook aimed at players and publishers alike. The book details a number of creatures who approximate the role and style of certain monsters ommitted from the SRD because of their strong association with the D&D trademark. Read more