Threadjack all you like.
Shadowdark uses gold for XP, no? That makes for a game a lot better suited to the tempo of the module as originally written (orange one, not green one which dungeon of signs is discussing). PCs go to a strange place, loot it, and get stronger. That risk/reward calculus...
Thanks for providing the background Jer.
The saddest part of the whole thing is that it was the only module written by Jean Wells--the first woman hired at TSR's design dept.--who was sidelined immediately thereafter, purportedly because upper management disliked the artwork in it.
I bet she...
Not sure what you mean by prese Tatiana--but I did read every entry in the 1987 Forgotten Realms Campaign Set and mark the adventure locations and settlements it describes on a map (in post 114 of this thread). It did not seem particularly 'points of light' in the heartlands region (or dalelands...
You know that awesome line in Star Wars IV where Leia says "General Kenobi. Years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars" completely without elaboration on what the Clone Wars were--and how much that line draws you in.
Well, this module does that really well (I mean the non-bowdlerized...
Thanks for providing the background. Some of this I knew, though not the RPGA bit about Sembia, Dragon Reach, and Southern Lake of Dragons. Though in Sembia's case I did basically get that sense from reading the entries.
One of the things I'm curious about (I asked some time back in another...
Rage as religious ecstasy makes sense conceptually, and it's pretty on brand with the (dubious) historical accounts of berserker rage. I'm not saying the subcass does the archetype well, but it's not a ridiculous idea. And barbarian archetypes are generally pretty thin; battlerager, storm...
Possible, but I'm not so sure.
I expect the DMG to be completely different.
Moreover, if subclasses are gonna appear in the DMG, they'd still want to playtest them, wouldn't they?
I have to agree with the folks commenting that the necromancer is missing.
Necromancers are a staple of fantasy fiction that are represented in mythology, and that appear across 1920s pulp, LotR, and recent fantasy. It's a pretty big archetype to leave out.
At this point, we have a pretty good idea which subclasses will be in the new PHB, though we don't know all of them yet. What do you think of the ones they ultimately decided to include? Are there any excluded that you think are unfortunate omissions?
You're welcome to answer in mechanics or...