Darkness and Dread: Anyone have it?

Desdichado · Aug 16, 2004

I've been very intrigued after stumbling onto a description of this book by Fantasy Flight Games, written my game design "superstar" Mike Mearls. Quite frankly, this seems to be exactly what I'm looking for for d20.

Looks like a lot of new core classes replace the higher magic D&D ones, hit points are redone as a Health System (that seems to work much like Ken Hood's Grim and Gritty Hit Points system), which make characters much more vulnerable, magic is redone as more of a fear inducing thing; all in all, this book seems perfect for running, say the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying setting in d20, or a Cthulhu-like game set in a fantasy milieu.

Color me extremely interested.

Has anyone picked this up yet? Any comments from anyone who has? There are a couple of reviews out there, but none on this site or rpg.net.

Psion · Aug 16, 2004

I have it.

I did not appreciate the flurry of classes. Gimme Grim Tales instead for this sort of thing.

That said, I really dug to rules for horror entities that you didn't confront the same way as traditional D&D boss monsters.

Davelozzi · Aug 16, 2004

Since we seem to be repeating the same conversation over here now that we're back up...

Davelozzi on rpg.net said:
Hmm, your description doesn't seen to have much in common with the info on the product page that you linked to. I'm not saying that you're wrong, mind you, I just haven't seen the product and am confused about what to expect.

Desdichado · Aug 16, 2004

I'd rather have the conversation here, rather than rpg.net, as it seems more appropriate for this site, assuming it stays up...

That said, I'll cut and paste the comments I just made over there:

Joshua Dyal @ rpg.net said:
The product page doesn't have a lot of info; I pulled that from the reviews I found.

Joshua Dyal @ rpg.net said:
That did make me wonder; that's an awful lot of new classes, and I seriously doubt that most of them would be necessary, especially in the same campaign. How much of the book did that cover, anyway?

That's what I was more interested in. Although I think the CoC Sanity system, from d20 CoC works fine, it feel aesthetically "wrong" within the confines of the d20 system, and I was really looking for horror/sanity/etc. types of rules that really fit the system better. How does that work out?

Desdichado · Aug 17, 2004

Joshua Dyal said:
I'd rather have the conversation here, rather than rpg.net, as it seems more appropriate for this site,

Although I guess it wasn't meant to be. Does nobody have this book? Or am I on everybody's ignore list by now? :heh:

Voadam · Aug 17, 2004

I'm a big horror and fantasy fan but I don't have it or d20 CoC.

From what you were looking for with horror/sanity/fear mechanics have you checked out the Ravenloft 3.0 Campaign setting or the 3.5 Ravenloft PH?

They handle them with will saves followed by varying consequences for failure. I don't use the fear or horror rules but I would change the fear to a fortitude save instead if I did so that warrior types would be better at handling fear than the weaker classes.

I do remember liking the Ravenloft madness rules, essentially anytime you enter the thoughts of something really alien such as an aberration or an undead, you risk going mad.

Afrodyte · Aug 17, 2004

I have it, and I like it a lot because it's very customizable, giving me tools I like having to create my own dark fantasy or horror campaign without having to buy some other campaign setting. Granted, some of the classes are less than inspiring, but it's easy to leave them out of your campaign. Of particular interest is how they rework skills and the things they introduce to arcane magic. I'll tell you more when I have more time to be more thorough.

Chaos Drake · Aug 17, 2004

Sounds fairly intriguing. Now you got me interested...

Raven Crowking · Aug 17, 2004

Hi Joshua.

I've got Darkness & Dread. I have to agree with Psion; the flurry of classes didn't particularly appeal to me, but there were some very good things in this book. The best among them, imho, were the godlings. These are creatures that have no hit points, and can only be defeated in ways prescribed by the DM.

There were useful bits on making magic more scarce (by making it more costly to cast), dark pacts, and insanity. Of course, some of these things have been done before. The research chapter is also quite good.

A lot of the ideas seemed reminscent of earlier CoC games.

RC

Desdichado · Aug 17, 2004

Raven Crowking said:
A lot of the ideas seemed reminscent of earlier CoC games.

That kinda seems to be the point, though; a CoC vibe in a fantasy setting. One of the problems with CoC is that it isn't very aesthetically pleasing from a game design standpoint. The Sanity rules, coming practically unchanged from the BRP system, feels very odd on top of the d20 game engine. The text in the book said that was done on purpose to create the feeling that it's somehow "wrong" but it really just is a jarring feel in play and is poor game design, IMO. It works, but it's not elegant. This book seemed to have mechanics that did the same thing but were designed to work within the framework of d20, which I was very interested in.

I've also heard from the rpg.net discussion that there's some awesome GM advice in this book; any comments on that?

EDIT: Oh, and any comments on the mini-setting? Northwall, is it called? What's that like?