Scarred Lands: Ask the Sage [This keeps up, I'm gonna need a bigger notebook!]

[Nightfall]

Sorry danant. But while that does sounds slightly troubling it's not a sign of the end. They still could be holding back for 2005. We'll see.


Joe,

Again we'll see. I've got to check my sources again. Understand folks I've not talked with any S&SS folks in over 3 months so I might be behind here. But when I get more substantive info, you'll know.

 

[danant]

OK. So SS&S has published it's Quaterly Insider and as we heard from GenCon news there won't be any SL products (ex. Lost Tribes of Scarred Lands of course) till the end of year 2004. What is even more interesting - there won't be any SL products till the end of March 2005.

Hmmm... Is SL Dying? Probably yes...

Why? Because SS&S has decided that they'll include all of the lost geography (Asherak, Dragon Lands & Fenrilik) in one book (288 pages). So no Asherak CS...

Sad but... possible?

Regards,
sad danant

 

[Trickstergod]

It is a bit depressing to hear that all the remaining continents will apparently end up being shoved into one book, one book that's only about as large as the past two singular continent books have been.

And yes, it does seem that it's possibly being done that way to "wrap up" the Scarred Lands, so to speak.

I suppose I'm not too surprised, though. Echoes of the Past, Blood Sea and the Faithful and the Forsaken were "meh" in my opinion, for varying reasons. Others I found to be simply mediocre, such as the Player's Guides, Edge of Infinity and Savage Bestiary. Then pretty much all of them have had less then stellar mechanics. The fact that there's really no core setting book, but instead 2-4, doesn't help much, either. With all of that in mind...I would figure sales to be none so great. Gamma World, Ravenloft, Warcraft, etc - all of them have some amount of previously established popularity or the like to help them out, but the Scarred Lands lacks that.

Despite Sword and Sorcery Studios being the largest third party publisher of d20 material, they're still not quite Wizards of the Coast by any means and the Scarred Lands isn't a previous TSR setting like ones such as Dragonlance. Officiality counts for a lot, I believe.

Not to mention that I don't believe White Wolf ever officially announced Changeling: the Dreaming from biting it and that if the Scarred Lands is going to fade into black, well...it might never be said so much as just happen and no official answer will be given, at least until after the last book is put out.

Who knows.

I can think of any number of reasons why publishing the Scarred Lands is currently being put on pause (the new World of Darkness and Eberron just to name two), I'm just annoyed by the fact that not one peep about the setting being continued or not has been heard. Not a, "Yeah, just on delay due to this and that reason," or an "Well, it's up in the air right now and we're not sure," or anything like that. Considering that the writers and developers alike occasionally read through these threads (here or elsewhere), it's not like I think they don't know about the curiosity that currently exists about the settings future, making the lack of info about what's going on doubly obnoxious.

Even an "We don't know what's happening with the Scarred Lands" from someone who should know would be nice, rather then this irritating silence on the matter.

 

[Blackivarr]

What will everyone do now that SL is gone, at least for now? I pretty much ignore F&F and Echos anyway, so I wonder what will happen as time passes is my game? SL can't remain static like the Greyhawk of old, it's about to boil over as we all know. I haven't quite thought it all through yet myself. What will you do with say Calastia, or any of the other plotlines just hanging out there? I have used some pretty neat stuff in the past but now seeing as it won't mess up anything that is going to be published later down the road (in the near future anyhow) I'll feel free to really go wild.

-Blackivarr

 

[Psion]

Would anyone be surprised if I found that heartening? I was discouraged the the stream of content was growing larger than I could keep up with. Seeing an end in sight makes me want to round out my collection.

Nightfall -- Did they ever develop anything for the Obsidian Pyre?

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

What will you do with say Calastia, or any of the other plotlines just hanging out there?

This might be strange, but until I read this, I was blissfully unaware that there were any plotlines hanging out there. I guess I've got my automatic "metaplot sucks and I shall ignore it" response tuned so well now that I'm not even registering that it's there (sucking and needing to be ignored). Sort of like billboards on the highways or telephone lines in the suburbs, my brain is just editing them out before I'm consciously aware of them. That's so cool!


Our SL game ended (well, technically it's on hiatus, but realistically we'll probably never come back to it since we have so many other games to play first) with the PCs being instrumental in putting together a massive coalition against Calastia which went on to beat the snot out of 'em in battle after battle. Up until the last one, anyway, which ended when the Madrielites withdrew their support for the war during the final siege of Calastia's capital because the citizens were suffering far more than the soldiers. So there's a bloodied, broken, but still potentially threatening Calastia lurking over there, its dreams of conquest put on hold while it rebuilds. Its neighbors have a little breathing room for the moment, but most of that's going to end up being used to prepare against the inevitable reprisals.

It was pretty fun. I highly recommend going wild with settings and making them your own, even if there ARE supplements still due to come out. The worst that could happen would be that you wouldn't have a use for that supplement in your game, and hell, that could happen anyway. And in the meantime, you'd be playing the game you wanted to play and getting to do all the fun, crazy, over-the-top, let's-make-a-real-difference adventuring, instead of choking on caution and waiting for someone else to tell you how the world gets changed.

I mean, support is fine, but actually doing what you want to do without worrying about what the game developers might think about it is better.

--
especially since they're never going to play in your game anyway
ryan

 

[Nightfall]

Would anyone be surprised if I found that heartening? I was discouraged the the stream of content was growing larger than I could keep up with. Seeing an end in sight makes me want to round out my collection.

Nightfall -- Did they ever develop anything for the Obsidian Pyre?

Other than the Player's guide giving a brief insight into them, not much else.

Me if they are ending it, I'm irate but I'll keep my hope alive...for now.

I will also agree with Trick, this silent treatment is very, very irratating.

Psion,

Hey you wanna round out a collection just wait for Robert Jordan to finish Wheel of Time. Me I wanted S&SS to expand and keep going with Scarred Lands just as much as any other setting. I still don't 100% believe it but we'll see.

 

[Cithindril]

Quite a good deal of doom and gloom being expressed for the setting...

I'm actually pleased that the SSS insider gave a few more details on the 'lost tribes of the SL'. Although I agree that lumping three continents into a single 288-page hardcover is not as desirable as publishing three separate campaign books, it still provides a ton of new material. If the company were really intending to just walk away I don't think they would go to the time and effort of publishing this book. I think the more likely answer is that with the negative critiques for their recent supplements, and the way Eberron is gobling up high fantasy market share, SSS has put all their effort into developing the niche market filled by WoD. In their shoes, I'd probably be in a wait and see mode as well. If LTotSL sells well I would be willing to bet that more products will follow. If it languishes, it might well be the end of the product line.

I really think the worst mistake the company has made is failing to keep their fans notified. I've seen too many posts from folks that have shifted to another campaign world because of disatisfaction with the release info provided by SSS.

Anyway, I know what early Christmas present I'll be buying for myself...

 

[Zelda Themelin]

So, this is what Lost Tribes is going to be. Ok, I will buy, hope they give maps out there too, like with other continents, though I think there won't be such things included with that book. Maybe as web enchantment, oh, yeh, they did remove idea of Scarred Lands support or at least it is how it seems to be from here.

I don't like the name. Lost might be ok, but tribes word take it too much what destroyed Glorantha for me as good game world (fake history/mythos creating fanatism instead of good adventure and feeling of fantasy) and also it was word I disliked in Werewolf the Aftermath oh I mean Apocalypse.

Opinions are weird however, and I don't currently have motivation to explain what I mean to drive you crazy. Hehe, kidding of course.

I hope jumping all continent material into one book, is quality instead of quantitity thing, and way to check if Scarred Lands still sells enough for them ever to make more books or at least keep the minimal web support.

Speaking of Eberron, and WotC:s contest that brought it to being. I think what killed Scarred Lands (at least for me and people I play with) was the way they changed that this:

1. Core Ethos Sentence. [A sentence that describes the core ethos of the world. For example, Forgotten Realms is a world of sword-and-sorcery adventure, where heroes battle monsters with magic.]"

and actually they also changed:

3. What do they do? [What are the main objectives of the heroes, and what steps do they take to achieve those objectives?]

4. Threats, Conflicts, Villains [What is the main danger to the world, and from whom does it come?]

5. Nature of magic [What is the source of magic? How abundant/scarce is it?]

6. What’s new? What’s different? [What makes this setting unique?]

Especially this 6th one.

I think it's very rare event any world survives such numerous changes, unless it's complite re-boot. At least you don't have people buying it for same reasons. I certainly don't.

 

[Nightfall]

Quite a good deal of doom and gloom being expressed for the setting...

Well I'm not going to express the gloom or doom but I will say I'm irratated. Other than that it's wait and see.

(I do want maps. It would be a nice change to have maps.)