Well JGK, let me defend some of the points you bring up, and then I'll leave the rest for the general populace.
JoeGKushner said:
Maps. In a setting, maps are very important. Maps here are minimal.
You're absolutely right. During the production of TC we didn't have anyone dedicated to cartography, and we're suffering for it. We certainly intend to post more, cooler maps up on our website in the future, but we're not sure what timeline this is on. For now just know that this is a problem we intend to rectify.
Editing. Right off the bat, when looking at some of the monsters, like the Undead Servitor, where are the combat stats? Enough said.
Again, guilty as charged. When TC was produced, we were a bunch of rookie publishers with what we thought was a great idea and a burning desire to get it published. We had no clue what we were actually getting in to, and we made some srious rookie mistakes. Lack of editing was one of them, and it's one we definately learned the hard way. Others can now attest to my stickler for editing (not just members of LI, either), and it's become my personal mission to ensure mistakes like those in TC are not made again. Broadsides! is already a tenfold improvement in this area, and I assure you we will only get better with each subsequent release.
Order of Entries: I find it annoying when things aren't alphabetized. Under major cities, for example, you'll have The Ciudads, and then the Burogs, and then the Five Duchies.
The entries in the Geography sections are listed by order of importance and/or significance. The entry you're referring to (Estrados) is ordered that way to show first the odd town structure in that province, then the single isolated city, then the five cities that make up the real power structure of the province. The change I would make would be to put Burgos last, actually, not alphabatize them.
Art: I like some of the art here, but I feel that some of the art is just filler and it's not that great of a filler.
Some of the art we're very pleased with; other, not so much. We didn't understand the concept of "No art is better than substandard art", another lesson we had to learn the hard way. We simply used what we had from past projects, with minimal regard to the quality. As you can see in Broadsides!, we didn't make that mistake again.
Layout. This should've been my other what should Gaming Frontier's Rant be. Some of the tabs here are 8 spaces. What's up with that?
This is something I can actually say was not entirely our fault. We had some communication issues with our printer, and this resulted in some odd formatting changes when they pressed our book. We've since figured out the problems, both on our end and his, and we've fixed them. Unfortunately, TC still exists as is, and some of the errors were indeed our mistakes (like TAB use). Another thing to chalk up to freshman mistakes, and mistakes we have rectified in future releases.
I do like the rituals and the idea of kobra, but neither are an integral part of the setting. By integral, I mean would the setting fall apart without 'em?
Actually, if you look at it closely, yes, it will. Our setting has one thing that is integral to keeping the proper feel and flavor; the cosmology. The twelve gods, the system of devotion we devised, the Maker's Plan, and so on. For the Maker's Plan to work, you need initiates to do the Ceremony of Life and sanctified ground to do it in. Without rituals, neither of these things are possible. It's a ritual to initiate, a ritual to sanctify. Now, granted, with some serious work a DM can figure out non-ritual ways to accomplish these things, but why? We feel that the ritual system is one of the two truly unique and awesome rules sets we devised (the naval system being the other), and we're quite proud of it. TC only presents a limited scope of this system, and we intend to expand upon it in an upcoming release (like we expanded the naval system into Broadsides!). Taking out the rituals, while possible, is really extracting one of the facets of TC that makes it worthy of being its own setting. Every setting has new geography, new gods, new cities, new PrC's... but how many actually give you entirely new rules systems to digest and expand?
The Five Lives bit is pretty different and the recharging spellcaster bit is also different. Still, it doesn't seem that outside the ability to cast rituals, that spellcasters get a lot in exchange for those harsh penalties.
When you say "harsh penalties", are you referring exclusively to the recharge? Allow me to explain our mindset a little. The recharging of spells encompasses all spellcasters. Most have a certain amount of days before they have to recharge (typically their class level is the number of days they can go without recharging) while others need to be in certain surroundings each day to get their spells (druids and rangers must be in natural surroundings). This was not done as any sort of balancing factor, but merely a new, unique facet of TC. We like the system of recharge; it offers new and unique tactical and dramatic challenges to the players and DM alike. If the DM doesn't like it, this is by far the easiest facet to remove without greatly impacting the world, or they can simply increase the duration of each recharge to make it less limiting. Rituals, though, do offer up a powerful ability that spellcasters in other settings do not have. We have been playing with rituals in our campaigns for years, and believe me when I say that they can be Campaign-altering is used properly. The right ritual at the right time can change the face of the encounter, or even the entire adventure. Conversely, they can give the DM virtually unlimited tools to explain everything mystical or fantastical in their individual encounters. Why does the "Light" spell not function in this dungeon? Clearly it's a ritual. Why is that priest of Grumach seemingly immune to blunt weapons? Ritual.
We go in to detail in the GM's Section in the book explaining how to properly implement these new facets, and give many recommendations about the uses of the unique rules and systems that we present.
Lots of potential in this setting. Lots of interesting ideas and material to look at. Huge book with a medium price.
Thanks for the praise after the criticism. We're proud of the content, even if we recognize the production quality is below average. The lack of production quality is what actually set our price point. We figured that the content was worth the money, but given our mistakes, we had to give the consumer a break. 304 pages for $25 is a steal in today's market.
I think that some more web bonuses downloads could go a long, long way in correcting some of these issues. The color map for example, is nice. I think that a 2nd edition would go even further.
As said above (and in other threads), the web is exactly the place we intend to fill in some of the gaps in TC. We plan to add all kinds of enhancements for download from our website, and would actually appreciate any sort of input you may have about what you'd like to see up there. A 2nd edition, at this point, isn't realistic for us. Books cost money; a lot of it. LI is a small company with limited resources, and we feel our resources are best used to bring new products to the shelves instead of reprinting TC. At some point in the future we may do this, but it's unlikely.
Anyway, I leave it now to the general d20 public to address. I hope my commentary has been enlightening, and has given you some insight.
