Turanil said:
Tell us more about it right now!!
Possible spoiler: if you don't want to know anything about this product, don't read this thread. I won't reveal any big 'secrets' though.
I haven't looked through the planes yet, except the rest dimensions. There are 51 planes, in 3 softbound books, plus the b&w looseleaf maps and illustrations on plain non-glossy paper. My initial impression when the postie handed me that big heavy parcel and I ripped the packing cardboard off with shaking hands to reveal the glory within, was that HoMP possesses that indefinable something I can only describe as 'coolness'.
The cover is beautiful (IMO). The general setting uses a generally Celtic and Fey type feel which might not fit some campaigns, I know I'll be doing some tweaking.
(Mild spoiler - players don't read
)
So far I've just read the intro & the 2 'rest areas'.
The Intro
The setup is grandiose, involving struggles between rival gods - this is definitely an 'epic' adventure, not just in length. The basic premise looks good to me; it would fit best in a vaguely Celtic or Greek type pantheon setting, not so well with remote abstract gods devoid of human emotions - the gods here are motivated by lust, love, and other very human emotions.
There is a lot of boxed text, here & everywhere - only it's not boxed, it just uses a different font (arial I think), which looks a bit ugly IMO. The players' intro is a total railroad (you were hired by X, went to Y, did Z & A, then B & C happened, then...", but this is of course necessary or else there's no scenario. I recommend ensuring all the players are keen for running this scenario, paraphrase the intro text a bit if you think they'll find the tone annoying, and it should be fine. As an intro it's suitably dramatic, anyway, given that the PCs have just survived a direct hostile encounter with a fairly major deity...
The Rest Areas
These contain fey creatures and IMO are interesting and well-done, if slightly twee in that mock-Gaelic way; I've seen much much worse though.
Lots of boxed text again here - I have to say that IMO Gary's prose would benefit from the ministrations of a stern editor. He constantly breaches most of the cardinal rules of RPG writing, eg he's always telling the players what their PCs are doing in the boxed text - from eating a carrot to performing a full search of the locale! It's also far too long. When I tried to run Necropolis the players were screaming at me to stop reading it out. If/when I run HoMP I'll be going heavy on the blue pencil. OTOH they are certainly flavourful & interesting to read; even though they are far too long, I much prefer them to the dryasdust writing in WoTC scenarios. Also unlike Necropolis, it's black text on white, in a decent font size, so it's easy to read & edit.
More later...
