2006 WotC D&D Product Survivor - Round 5

Begin the deathwatch for the Fantastic Locations products. They're DDM products with a D&D label slapped onto them as an afterthought.

While in general, I like the Fantastic Location products, Dragondown grotto was pretty bad.

My overall reviews for the Fantastic Location:

Best battlemaps ever.

Fane of the Drow: best of the line from both a map and story perspective. Perhaps one of Gwendolyn Kestrel's best works for WOTC.

Dragondown Grotto by Ed Stark: Least useful battle maps. Story involves Meepo, which is cool. How many times will you need an adventure set in a dragon graveyard or a spellscale nursery?

Frostfell Rift by Ari Marmell. Horrible story and minimally useful arctic maps. Only redeeming quality is that one of the flip sides of one map is the legendary "Caves of Chaos" from B2 The Keep on the Borderlands. Makes this adventure product a bit more useful than Dragondown Grotto.

Fields of Ruin by Richard Pett. Story not as good as the story in Dragondown Grotto or Fane of the Drow. Maps are generally useful. One outdoor map, two Keep maps, and one Dugoeon of Blood map.

My ratings for the series:

Fane of the Drow: A+
Fields of Ruin: B-
Frostfell Rift: C+
Dragondown Grotto: C-

As a side note, don't forget you can combine the maps.

Combining the Forest Cliff Map from Dragondown Grotto with the Caves of Chaos map from Frostfell Rift lets you get something near what the real Caves of Chaos map should be like.

I think we've hit an interesting plateau in the game. We have about 7 entries within 4 votes of each other. No run away "losers."

In fact the 2nd place book right now is a book that I haven't seen any complaints about in the thread.

Endur said:

My overall reviews for the Fantastic Location:

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So at the risk of hijacking, what element of the story did you feel was "horrible"? Was it the fact that it wasn't tied together into a single "mini-module," like the previous ones? Since if that's the case, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed from here on out.

But if that wasn't it, I'm happy to discuss what it was.

Mouseferatu said:

Was it the fact that it wasn't tied together into a single "mini-module," like the previous ones?

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This actually threw me this time, but I realized I prefer it that way. I think it focuses more on the intent of the series (a fantastic location).

I think the biggest thing the series has going against it in this series is that it has a tie into the miniatures game. There is a vocal group that dislikes anything in the RPG product line tying into the miniatures game.

As I said before, the only hard tie the product has are the map markings (so they are usable in the miniatures game) and a page of scenario. Frostfell Rift doesn't even seem to be tied into the miniatures releases like the others were. The others had monsters for the most recent sets being focused on, even to absurd levels (one requiring something like 20-30 of a rare miniature, if you don't want to use proxies).

Glyfair said:

As I said before, the only hard tie the product has are the map markings (so they are usable in the miniatures game) and a page of scenario. Frostfell Rift doesn't even seem to be tied into the miniatures releases like the others were. The others had monsters for the most recent sets being focused on, even to absurd levels (one requiring something like 20-30 of a rare miniature, if you don't want to use proxies).

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In fact, I was specifically told not to require too many rare minis, or to make the scenarios too dependent on the new minis sets (though I was supposed to incorporate them to an extent). I think the entire point was to make the Fantastic Locations series more universally useful.

Speaking of, I'm given to understand that that's also the reason for shifting to the wider array of scenarios, with a wide spread of levels/CRs between them, instead of trying to treat it as a mini-module: It means that the FL isn't only useful to people playing at exactly the right level.

This discussion brings me to question the sense of these "survivor" threads. I'm not sure whether the "Fantastic Locations" products are still in the race because they are better than the products that have been voted off so far, or because most people here on EN World didn't buy them. At least I won't vote them off as I was never interested in them in the first place - mainly because of their miniature ties - and I don't vote against products I don't know well.

Turjan said:

At least I won't vote them off as I was never interested in them in the first place - mainly because of their miniature ties - and I don't vote against products I don't know well.

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Solid attitude.

But for what it's worth, the "miniature ties" of the FL series are limited to some symbols on the maps, and the last page of the book (which gives rules for miniatures game scenarios). The remainder of the pages are all RPG locations/encounters.

Mouseferatu said:

But for what it's worth, the "miniature ties" of the FL series are limited to some symbols on the maps, and the last page of the book (which gives rules for miniatures game scenarios). The remainder of the pages are all RPG locations/encounters.

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May well be. My decision not to buy them was more based on what I saw of "mixed use" maps in Dungeon or Dragon. They looked different from most RPG maps, with funny walls and obstacles everywhere. If this is not the case with the FL maps, tell me .

Turjan said:

May well be. My decision not to buy them was more based on what I saw of "mixed use" maps in Dungeon or Dragon. They looked different from most RPG maps, with funny walls and obstacles everywhere. If this is not the case with the FL maps, tell me .

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Hmm... The FL maps do indeed contain a lot of obstacles--rough terrain, barriers, in some cases more exotic stuff like narow ice bridges or lava streams--but I don't know if that makes 'em that much different from other RPG maps. I know that I've made frequent use of them in my own games; they're fantastic (no pun intended) as battle maps for when I don't want to create my own. (A frequent occurence; I hate mapping.)

Are they for you? Dunno. Guess it depends how often you'd use preprinted battle maps. I'm not specifically trying to sell you on 'em; just saying it'd be a mistake to dismiss them purely due to "minis influence."