iron kingdoms?

[Canada_K]

If you don't own the Witchfire Trilogy, GO OUT AND BUY IT!

The encounters are designed to knock the players' socks off, and make them sit and shout "COOL!".

There is plenty of material inside the adventure books to give a very solid foundation on the Iron Kingdoms. Certainly enough to run a campaign there until the sourcebooks come out. Anything else you might be looking for could likely be pulled fom their website.

In my opinion, the Witchfire Trilogy is the only non-WotC D20 product I won that was worth the money to buy it, and the time to read it. Privateer Press deserves a big thumbs up for producing such high-quality products.

 

[johnnype]

I found the setting, what little we can see from the three adventures and the monsternomicon, to be fantastic. Like many others I can't wait to get my hands on Lock and Load and the setting book.

My only complaint has to be the dreadfully sloooooooooooow rate at which the books are being published. It borders on the ridiculous! I love Steampunk, however, so I'm willing to give them some slack although I wish they would forget the miniatures game and focus exlusively on the RPG.

Lastly let me give you this little bit of info from another publisher alltogether (Fantasy Flight Games):

Sorcery & Steam HardCover
The shriek of metal to metal overpowers everything as two spell-infused iron giants clash on the field of battle. Around them, warriors clad in chainmail armor fire powerful cannons as a phalanx of pistoleers makes their way across the grass. Mages research powerful spells in rusty towers as their clockwork familiars scuttle about on razor-sharp legs. Sorcery & Steam contains all the d20 rules

needed to explore this fantasy world filled with steam-driven monstrosities, clockwork beasts, black powder firearms, and the marriage of magic and technology. Priced at $24.95

Coming out in March 2003.

 

[tsadkiel]

Honestly, I really don't like the Monsternomicon. It's a beautifully done piece of work, but I don't really care for the creature mix presented (too many undead and humanoids for my tastes). Plus, I've never liked first person narration in game books, especially when in such close proximity to stats. That's a completely unreasonable prejudice on my part, though. I like the Trollkin, though.

But what do I know? I don't like Spycraft, either.

 

[Sen Udo-Mal]

iron kingdoms!

I, as others (but not all :O)) really like this setting. I started running the WFI "the Longest Night" about a month ago and the characters are about half way though it (I throw lots of other stuff their, including lots of role-playing/investigation, library research, false trails that led them off to a Black Hand smuggling operation... now of course they may gain a great enemy that is only touch on in the first game city of Corvis description). The party is made up of an thaumaturgy/enchanter, a tinker (both classes from AEG Magic book), a one armed fighter, a fighter/rogue bodyguard (to the enchanter) and a expert/ranger (all human).
I REALLY liked the Monsternomicon, but then I like Undead and thought the first person descriptions were cool (better then bla, bla, bla here is your monster). I loved the scale that is included with each monster vs. human size. I LOVED the art and the setting stuff in the back helped with some info that I was looking for. Yes I would love it if their stuff came out faster but I really think it is a really cool setting that I am going to enjoy for a long time...

 

[jaldaen]

I am biased since I helped write the Monsternomicon... but for me the only reason why I wrote for the Monsternomicon was because of the great setting that is the Iron Kingdoms... in fact I never owned an adventure module (let alone 3) until the Witchfire Trilogy... and I must say that they were all well worth it... I did DM a few sessions of IK when it (WF 1) first came out, but I decided to wait for more of the setting first... hopefully soon the Lock and Load Character Primer will come out and I will start up a new campaign... I have a bunch of players who want to get in on it so that should tell you something less biased ;-)

Joseph Miller
Freelancer

 

[darkbard]

thanks for all the feedback folks! it sounds like many of you have similar feelings to my own: this is great stuff but they're not publishing it fast enough to maintain interest. i picked up the first witchfire module at day 1 but haven't run it yet because i didn't want to get into something without knowing the final outcome. this is sort of how i feel now. i could pick up the monsternomicon (i probably will anyway) but how much use will it be without the fleshed out campaign setting book? sure, i could transport bits and pieces to any world but the consensus seems to be that for full effect, the setting should be the IK.

will even lock & load be enough to start an IK campaign?

 

[Desdichado]

No way, Monsternomicon is great as a standalone book! Probably my favorite d20 book in print, right next to Legions of Hell and Manual of the Planes.

Reading the Monsternomicon, I was originally intending to just borrow monsters I liked for my homebrew, but more and more the setting started calling me. I think my homebrew will bear such a heavy Iron Kingdoms stamp on it now that it will look contrived! Although I do prefer the Green Ronin primitive firearms rules to the Privateer ones, I'm afraid.

 

[ajanders]

Eking out the Iron Kingdoms

The Iron Kingdoms is pretty much the setting I would have written if I had the time (and could draw).
I had wanted a setting with Gothic Horror, swashbuckling, and a sense of wonder in its magic. I was going to write it and put it on a big website and be famous and talked about on ENworld.
Then I saw Longest Night.
On the downside, I'm not famous. On the upside, I've actually gotten to run a good setting instead of figure out how to write it, then figure out how to run it.
Having said that, one of the major frustrations of the Iron Kingdoms is that nothing is very well defined except for Corvis. Heck, we couldn't even fully define characters until the Monsternomicon. If it was a more "generic" setting, that wouldn't be a problem: with some of the twists Privateer Press has put on things, you occasionally either break their canon (or cannon) or do some hurried retrofitting when new material comes out. Either is acceptable, really, if sometimes frustrating. From my standpoint, unfortunately, the twists are really too good to ignore, so there's some retro-fitting. (Elven cleric NPC to elven cleric PC..."God's up on the roof...")
The other major frustration is that there's a shortage of stuff for it. That said, here's my list of things that shoehorn well into an IK game.

Three Days to A Kill...starts off neatly at the climax of The Longest Night, and can be scaled up easily to provide the appropriate level of threat.

The Belly of the Beast...switch the orcs for boggers and pick a gang to replace the Iron Ring: after that, you're good to go.

Everything Freeport: I changed the name to Five Fingers and suddenly had a plethora of adventures and adventure hooks. It's a bit of a shame I didn't know about IK dragons at that point, but I can probably massage the visual details of future dragontainted.

I do not recommend Fool's Errand, I'm afraid. The adventure has to be stage managed too heavily for my tastes. Plus eventually someone says "Hey, let's throw the Witchfire to the thrullg! That should keep it under control!" (and also make running the third module impossible) (NB to DM's: players will tolerate the solution of 'The magic of the artifact causes the thrullg to grow to the size of Godzilla, requiring everybody to work together to kill it.' But at least when I do it, it appears forced.)

The Monsternomicon also has great ideas for short adventures, which is pretty much all you need at that point.

 

[KingOfChaos]

I want to get my hands on the setting book for Iron Kingdoms. It reminds me of the computer game, Arcanum, which I loved (and played straight through without quitting). Plus, one of my staff members said it looked pretty nifty.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

As I said before. I've managed to port over just about everything (gobbers included) into the Realms with very little problem. Since the folks I game with are all relativley new, or aren't Realms purists I've run into very few problems.

By changing some names and coming up with some ulternative creatures in a few cases things were able to work out just fine. (the alternate creatures were mainly due to my PC's needing a bit more of a challenge in a few spots)

As settings go this one has to be one of the best. I hope Privateer is in business for a good long time producing lots of quality porducts. I do wish things were coming out faster as well. But I don't tink anything has suffered in my campaign for not having the "Iron Kingdoms" fully detailed out. Just takes a little elbow grease and a bit of flexing the DM creativity and it work fine.